The conventional wisdom is that landraces and local breeds are better adapted to marginal conditions than modern crop varieties and livestock breeds. A paper has just been published in Agricultural Systems that tries to quantify this. The researchers defined marginal areas “as those areas where possible land uses are relatively limited because of higher altitude, shorter growing season, steeper slopes, less fertile soils or broadly speaking because of generally lower soil productivity.” They calculated a synthetic index of marginality using all kinds of environmental and socio-economic data and mapped its value throughout Europe. They also mapped the distribution of goat and sheep breeds using data from the Econogene project. Then they calculated how good the marginality index was at predicting the presence of local breeds. The result: “Increasing marginality, as measured by these indices, is positively and significantly correlated to the fact that local, traditional breeds are present.”
Agave paper
There’s a paper out on the diversity of Agave in Mexico, the source of tequila.
Equator prize winners bank on biodiversity
The five winners of the United Nations Development Programme Equator Prize shared US$1.5 million and something else: biodiversity. Of the five, three depend squarely on biodiversity, one is managing a natural resource more effectively, and one educates people about biodiversity.
The village of Andavadoaka in Madagascar was among the winners, honoured for demonstrating how it managed an octopus fishery so that it can provide sustainable long-term benefits.
In Kenya, the Shompole Community Trust won for conserving the country’s vast and scenic grasslands and savannah as part of a profit-making ecotourism venture for the local Masai people.
In Guatemala, the women of Alimentos Nutri-Naturales won the prize for reinstating the Maya nut as a staple source of nutrition and this conserving the nut forests in the buffer zone next to a biosphere reserve.
The women of Isabela Island’s “Blue Fish” Association, who work within the World Heritage-listed Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, were rewarded for marketing a local delicacy – tuna smoked with guava wood – as a way to promote the alternative use of marine resources and control invasive plant species.
The other winner, Shidulai Swarnivar Sangstha, uses riverboat-based educational resource centres throughout the Ganges River delta in Bangladesh to deliver information to locals about sustainable agricultural practices and market prices.
Not surprising, really. But it would be nice to know more, and that information is proving hard to find. If any of the winners or their colleagues happen to read this, point us to a source for your story, please.
People power
Here’s another potpourri, this one centred on local people’s perceptions of agricultural biodiversity. From the journal Livestock Science comes a paper looking at how traditional livestock keepers in Uganda select breeding bulls and cows among Ankole longhorn cattle. Another paper, this one from Crop Protection, discusses how Ethiopian farmers rank sorghum varieties with regard to their resistance to storage pests, and indeed what they do about such pests. And finally, from The Hindu newspaper, news of an initiative, to be launched on the International Day for Biological Diversity by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, for a “people’s movement” to “prepare a database of all living organisms and traditional knowledge systems” in Kerala. The initiative is part of the state’s draft biodiversity strategy and action plan, which apparently includes consideration of agricultural biodiversity.
Orange bananas
Over at Bioversity International’s news pages there’s an interview with West African scientists who are trying to develop orange-fleshed bananas to tackle vitamin A deficiency.
LATER: The Bioversity link has disappeared, but I’ve replaced it with one from New Agriculturist that’s much the same.