Category: History

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Of cattle and people. And barley

Dienekes, a blogger who specializes in molecular anthropology, has a quick note today on a paper on the molecular genetics of cattle in Europe. The main story is one of distinction between North and South.

Apparently, the expansion of the dairy breeds have created, or largely maintained, a sharp genetic contrast of northern and southern Europe, which divides both France and Germany. It may be hypothesised that the northern landscapes, with large flat meadows, are suitable for large-scale farming with specialised dairy cattle (Niederungsvieh, lowland cattle), whilst the mixed-purpose or beef cattle (Höhenvieh, highland cattle) are better suited to the smaller farms and hilly regions of the south. However, it is also remarkable that in both France and Germany the bovine genetic boundary coincides with historic linguistic and cultural boundaries. In France, the Frankish invasion in the north created the difference between the northern langue d’oïl and the southern langue d’oc. The German language is still divided into the southern Hochdeutsch and northern Niederdeutsch dialects, which also correlates with the distribution of the Catholic and Protestant religions. On a larger scale, it is tempting to speculate that the difference between two types of European cattle reflects, and has even reinforced, the traditional and still visible contrast of Roman and Germanic Europe.

It doesn’t seem that the strong latitudinal genetic differentiation in cattle is matched by one in human populations. Here the pattern is much more gradual and clinal. ((Maybe there’s more interbreeding among human populations than between cattle breeds?)) However, there may be a similar “sharp genetic contrast of northern and southern Europe” (or at least between the Mediterranean and the rest of Europe) for barley. ((Yeah, I know it’s an old paper, but it’s the only map of barley genetic diversity in Europe I could find online at short notice. No doubt our readers will send in better examples.))

I’d dearly love to have the time to find out whether other livestock and crops show a similar pattern.

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Nibbles: Neanderthal, CWR, Bioinformatics, Svalbard, Old Armenian wine, Maple syrup, Plants databases, Bananas in trouble

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Nibbles: Squash etc, Potatoes, Economics, Pharaonic palm, goats, Chickpea

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Nibbles: Old fruit, Same fruit, Fruit juice, Dog breeding, Plant Cuttings, Seed storage, Romanian cattle breeds

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Tough questions about agricultural research

First, has the decline in funding and the shift toward a breakthrough science model left us adequately prepared to solve the problems with our national and global food system? And second, would simply bolstering, as opposed to also broadening, our current system of agricultural research be an adequate response?

Us, in this case, being the US.

Paul B. Thompson, the W.K. Kellogg Chair in Agricultural, Food and Community Ethics at Michigan State University, had a great post in the run-up to Thanksgiving that I missed last week. He points out that Americans have been “disinvesting” in agricultural research and development over the past three decades, and that what investment there was has been “too narrowly focused on piecemeal adjustments in plant and animal genetics”.

Thompson then gives a run-down on the history of agricultural research in the US, and how it changed, especially in the wake of the Pound report in 1975. And despite the efforts of farm lobby groups, who fought to preserve the old system of land-grant universities and research, agricultural research and the ways it was funded altered in fundamental ways. Why? As Thompson notes of the USDA’s effective approach to solving farmers’ problems,

Despite its utility, however, this was not especially sexy science.

The analysis goes on to look at the rise in popularity of alternative “low-input methods such as organic, no-till, and poly-crop” approaches to farming, and at how, and why, these approaches have been so ill-served by research and research funding. What I find so remarkable is that Thompson’s detailed look at the USDA finds a mirror in research for poorer countries. Here’s what he has to say:

There is debate about these alternative approaches here in the United States, but there is really no debating the fact that poor farmers around the world could imitate many of [these] farming practices, given some adaptive research that tailors them to local soils and climate. In contrast, the more industrial approach requires two things that poor farmers lack. One is the infrastructure of local seed, fertilizer, and chemical companies, along with an effective regulatory system to monitor the impact of high-tech farming. The other is the money to buy these inputs from the private sector, even when they are available.

There is much more that repays a close reading; for example:

[T]he organic farming community’s attraction to vitalistic metaphors and unsubstantiated health-claims alienated many scientists whose careers depended upon pursuing a research program that could pass the laugh test. … [R]esearch focused on genomics and genetic engineering was much more promising to a budding scientist than the iffy strategy of partnering with the organic growers.

Lets forget about organic, for now, and the laugh test as a measure of scientific value, and see US scientists renew the old-fashioned approach to food and nutrition security, because clearly where US agriculture leads, the rest of the world follows.