Indigenous knowledge systems

March 26, 2010March 26, 2010

Tributes to Bob Rhoades

Ashamed of the brevity of our note on the passing of Prof. Robert Rhoades a few days back, I welcome this opportunity of giving more prominence to comments on that post from a couple of friends of his.

From Cary:

Bob Rhoades was a wonderful man who made a tremendous contribution to our field. He was indeed a great teacher, advisor and researcher. In addition to what is mentioned in the short article above, let me note that he worked for a number of years at CIP, and was the author of another memorable National Geographic article, “The Incredible Potato.” He also co-founded the Southern Seed Legacy with his wife, Prof. Virginia Nazarea, who is also a very prominent figure in crop diversity. Personally, I treasure the times I spent with Bob at his farm outside Athens, and a trip we made on the back-roads through Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina, visiting seed savers and conservationist along the way.

And from Pablo:

I am so saddened to hear that Bob Roades died. He was perhaps the first social scientist to systematically document, improve and extend farmer’s knowledge about agricultural biodiversity. His modest and warm approach in the field, his gentle humour, and sharp intellect earned him the respect of farmers everywhere he worked. As anthropologists we are proud of the pathbreaking work that Bob did, charting the way so that many others could also contribute. Bob loved speaking about his farm in Georgia, his Oklahoma roots, his marriage to Virginia. His generosity and ideas keep him dear to me. My condolences to Virginia and his family.

March 25, 2010

Robert Rhoades RIP

Robert E. Rhoades is dead. He was a pioneer of agricultural anthropology and wrote extensively on conservation of agrobiodiversity, especially how local people do it. His 1991 National Geographic piece The World’s Food Supply at Risk is a classic.

March 25, 2010March 25, 2010

Nibbles: Sheep genotypes, Farming Matters, African Rice Congress, Malawi food, Quinoa et al.

Better sheep through information. From Australia, natch. Thanks, Dirk.
New Farming Matters out. When did this ILEIA magazine change its name? Remains essential reading anyway.
Some participants voice their expectations of the African Rice Congress.
A traditional Malawi meal.
Whole grain recipes.

March 23, 2010

The microbe commons in the spotlight

The International Journal of the Commons, a new one on me, has a special issue on microbes. Actually, not just microbes. The idea seems to be to compare and contrast what is happening in microbial genetic resources with the access and benefit sharing and IPR regimes which are in force for other bits of biodiversity. There’s even an interesting paper entitled “Crop improvement in the CGIAR as a global success story of open access and international collaboration,” by Byerlee and Dubin. Elinor Ostrom, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Economics, is a member of the editorial board of the journal.

March 21, 2010March 22, 2010

Rebuilding livelihoods in Haiti through fairs

It’s very easy to assume that after a disaster one of the things that farmers would most welcome from the outside is good seed. But of course it’s a bit more complicated than that, as an assessment by Catholic Relief Services of the seed sector in Haiti after the recent earthquake makes clear. Perhaps the key result was that there was plenty of seed around:

Good quality seed of the varieties that farmers’ prefer is available in the areas surveyed. The household survey shows that farmers are utilizing similar levels of own seed stock as in previous years. Vendors in the market report normal levels of seed for sale.

The problem was access:

Families simply do not have resources available to make the usual investments in agriculture. This has led, in some instances, to decisions to actually cultivate less because of inability to acquire inputs (including seed, fertilizer, and animal traction).

There were also changes in cropping patterns, with a shift towards shorter-duration crops to get quick yields and income. The main recommendation was stark:

Direct seed distribution should not take place… This emergency is not the appropriate time to try to introduce improved varieties on anything more than a small scale for farmer evaluation.

And there was some trenchant criticism of previous seed distribution programmes:

…seed provided by FAO post hurricane last year either arrived too late to plant during the season or failed to germinate.

Rather, CRS recommended that there should be seed fairs to facilitate access to locally available and adapted planting material, food distribution to alleviate pressure on seed reserves and cash for work to build up household capital to purchase inputs. And also something I’d never heard of: livelihoods fairs, with vouchers. There’s not much on the internet about these, but they seem to take the idea of seed fairs and extend them to other necessities of rural life, such as tools, fertilizers and tin roofing. The idea is “to help restore liquidated reserves and enable farm households to start reinvesting in their productive capacity.”

Now that all seems very sensible, and it strikes me that it probably isn’t the fist time a survey along these lines has been done, and such recommendations put forward. But are the mistakes of the past being repeated anyway?