Did you know there’s an International Kitchen Garden Day on the fourth Sunday of August each year? Neither did I, but it’s a good way of celebrating agrobiodiversity, isn’t it? Anyway, I got to hear about it via a wiki on Sustainable Community Action that Danny has just blogged about over at Rurality.
Danny goes solo
You may remember some of Danny Hunter’s excellent contributions to this blog, for example his take on the importance of mentoring in helping to enhance scientific research capacity in developing countries. He also recently kicked off a fascinating discussion on the worldwide distribution of the practice of floating-bed cultivation.
Well, no doubt inspired by our example, Danny’s got a brand new blog of his own now. It’s called Rurality, and its mission is to:
collect and share information relevant to rural development in an Irish context by exploring commonalities between global and local experiences and practices. By generating discussion and debate, it hopes to construct information that will be accessible in one place, and of value, to people with an interest in rural living.
Do check it out, it’s really great. We’ve added Rurality to our blogroll, and we’ll be visiting Danny regularly for his thoughts on agrobiodiversity.
Animal genetic resources conference
The First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is on at Interlaken, Switzerland. Earth Negotiations Bulletin is providing daily reports. The first official press release is also out. Are you there? Would you like to tell us what is going on? Drop us a line.
The services of agricultural biodiversity
The latest (number 18) Biodiversity and Society Bulletin of the Poverty and Conservation Learning Group discusses a new UNEP-WCMC publication ((Ash, N. and Jenkins, M. (2007). Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction: The Importance of Ecosystem Services. United Nations Environment Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Centre, Cambridge.)) entitled “Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction: The Importance of Ecosystem Services.”
It’s a very good assessment of the services provided by biodiversity, in particular to the poor. These services include:
- fresh water quality
- protection from natural hazards
- regulation of infectious diseases
- regulation of climate and air quality
- waste processing and detoxification
- nutrient cycling
- medicines
- timber, fibres and fuel
- cultural services
But food provision and food security are right up front, and that discussion doesn’t just deal with species diversity in farming systems (although this is somewhat underplayed, I think), landraces (though not, unfortunately, wild crop relatives, to any great extent) and wild foods. It also ranges over the wider agricultural biodiversity which supports food production. That means soil micro-organisms, pollinators and the natural enemies of pests:
Although some or all these functions can in theory be replaced by artificial, technologically-derived substitutes, these are often expensive and increase the dependency of poor people on industries and producers beyond their control.
The document ends with some implications for policy. I guess this is the bottom line:
The medium and long-term interests of the poor are likely to be best served by the maintenance of a diverse resource base at the landscape (i.e. accessible) scale, at the very least as a vital risk mitigation measure. This does not, of course, mean that all forms of intensification and adoption of new technologies should be avoided – far from it. Judicious application of new technologies and techniques, use of improved varieties (not necessarily excluding those developed with gene transfer technologies) in agriculture, and appropriate levels of inputs such as nitrogen and phosphate-based fertiliser, can increase productivity and help towards eliminating poverty. Increasing the efficiency of use of existing agricultural lands can actually reduce environmental degradation by reducing the incentive to convert marginal lands. The key is that such development should not be at the expense of the existing natural resource base and should be planned to ensure delivery of medium and long-term benefits, rather than maximising short-term gains.
Pity that the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is not mentioned in the section on international obligations, though.
Spud exhibits
There’s a Potato Museum, apparently. Pass the chips.