Professionals in the world of agricultural biodiversity will know the name of Bent Skovmand, and will have been saddened to learn of his death last week. The rest of you, pop on over to the New York Times or the Minneapolis Star Tribune and read the obituaries of this remarkable, inspiring man.
Future prospects for European crop varieties
Last time I looked at the state of seed availability in Europe and how it got that way: a one-size-fits-all approach that suits industrial growers and their breeders well enough but that leaves gardeners and specialist growers out in the cold. This time, what are they doing about it.
This whole discussion began with the prosecution of the Kokopelli Association in France for selling seeds of unregistered varieties. That provoked disbelief and a note that change was being discussed. So it is. The version I saw of the “Draft Commission Directive establishing the specific conditions under which seed and propagating material of agricultural and vegetable species may be marketed in relation to the conservation in situ and the sustainable use of plant genetic resources through growing and marketing” is due to come into force on 1 April 2007
I shall refrain from the obvious joke.
The provisions of the draft are somewhat complex, and in boiling them down I will almost certainly get something wrong. But in essence, a “conservation variety” or “amateur variety … with no intrinsic value for commercial production” can be sold within a “bio-geographic region” without having to be registered under the previous seed marketing directives. There are many other conditions hedged about, like the colour of the labels and the minimum size of the packages. Two stick out. The total seed sold for each conservation variety shall not exceed 0.1% of the seed of that species used each year in the country concerned. And marketing is limited to the bio-geographic region of origin or adaptation of the variety.
Continue reading “Future prospects for European crop varieties”
Rapid agrobiodiversity surveys
This SciDevNet piece led me to this Nature article on the theory and practice of the Rapid Biological Inventory, “a quick, intensive taxonomic expedition designed to identify areas of particular biological, geological and cultural significance before development and exploitation take hold.”
Using satellite images, maps and other data, biologists target promising areas and then work with local scientists and students to walk existing and newly cut trails, recording the species they encounter. (…) In parallel with these are social inventories — surveys of the organisational structure of local communities and how they use the forest. The teams work with indigenous groups, government and local conservation organisations to deepen their understanding of the value of the surveyed areas.
I think the concept was pioneered by Conservation International, under the name Rapid Assessment Program, or RAP, but as far as I can see it hasn’t been applied to agricultural biodiversity, at least not explicitly. Seems to me one could come up with a pretty good “rapid agrodiversity assessment” methodology based on standard crop descriptors combined with traditional knowledge, wrapped up in a participatory rural appraisal (PRA) approach. Maybe someone already has?
How the European Common Catalogue destroys biodiversity
Charities know that it is a good idea to forge a bond between those who have and those who have not — the better to make those who have, give. So winsome children and kindly old people show us that we are all part of one big happy family, and families help one another, don’t they? But what if those who are normally the position of having, and giving, become those who need?
All of which is a roundabout way of saying that as far as agricultural biodiversity is concerned, Europe is probably more in need of help than anywhere else. Elsewhere, as in Europe, intensive agriculture and monocropping are destroying existing biodiversity. But elsewhere, unlike Europe, farmers, gardeners and ordinary folk who just want to grow themselves a bit of food have a bit of choice. If they can find the variety they want, they can buy it (or obtain it by barter, whatever) and grow it. In Europe that is not legal.
Continue reading “How the European Common Catalogue destroys biodiversity”
Using biodiversity collections
Researchers have estimated rates of reproduction and survival for the marbled murrelet by “comparing the ratios of birds in different age groups using 170 specimens collected between 1892 and 1922 housed in the collections of the California Academy of Sciences and the UC Berkeley Museum of Vertebrate Zoology … with values predicted from comparison with other bird species, and with contemporary rates obtained from murrelets they captured at sea and from their mark-recapture studies.” The results suggested that birth rates were almost 10 times higher for this endangered seabird 100 years ago than they are today. Read all about it here. That’s a very creative use of a biodiversity collection to explain the recent decline in numbers of this species, and its conservation status. Has something similar been done with herbarium and/or plant genebank collections? I can’t think of any examples, but they must be out there…