You can’t keep a good man down. Dr Ken Street, who may or may not be the Indiana Jones of agriculture, has been explaining why Australia’s Grains and Development Corporation (GRDC) has given $5 million to the Global Crop Diversity Trust. Part of GRDC’s contribution is earmarked for Central Asia and the Caucasus, where wheat and other cereals were domesticated and where there are still valuable genetic resources. The Trust will help to conserve material collected in those regions, which Street says has already demonstrated resistance to three different kinds of wheat rust: leaf, yellow and stripe. GRDC is funded by a levy on Australian cereal farmers, and the genetic resources supported by the Trust will be freely available to all researchers. So, as Street neatly sums up: “the benefit to Australia is access to genes that could solve many current production constraints”.
Back to biofuels
On the one hand, there’s a good chance that the rush to biofuels will create conflict, especially in developing countries. Indeed, according to Gristmill it is already happening in places like West Kalimantan, in Indonesia, “where the rush to plant palm-oil plantations is generating conflict with Indonesians who grow rubber trees and other crops on their small plots of land”. And on the other, scientists are helping turn biodiesel into a “proper” industry, with profitable by-products that make the whole enterprise more profitable. The New York Times reports on USDA researchers who are exploring ways to make use of the waste products of biodiesel, including some with horticultural applications.
What the first Green Revolution taught India
What would you say were the lessons of the first Green Revolution in India? That wealthier farmers on good land need even more help to boost their yields? Or that the smaller, poorer farmers by passed (or even actively harmed) by the Green Revolution should be the focus of attention now?
OK, so it’s an unfair question. Intensive farming does need continuing research and development to thrive and expand. And rural smallholders, while they could be assisted in their quest for food security, are not the answer to national problems. Nevertheless, I confess to being more than a little dismayed by the report of a recent speech by India’s new president Pratibha Patil to the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
“The structural weaknesses of the agriculture sector include low levels of public investment, exhaustion of the yield potential of new high yielding varieties of wheat and rice, unbalanced fertilizer use, low seeds replacement rate and low yield per unit area across almost all crops.”
Patil further said that the reasons for low agri-production are the diminishing size of land holdings, degradation in land quality and soil health due to improper nutrient application, the looming threats of global warming and climate change, and emergence of new pests and diseases.
Weak linkages between research and extension, limited credit access at reasonable rates of interest, non-remunerative prices, inadequate market access, poor rural infrastructure and insufficient post-harvest infrastructure such as warehousing, cold chains, and agro-processing facilities are other features plaguing our agricultural production environment, she added.
Many of the “reasons” Patil enumerated look from afar like the consequences of poor intensification rather than weaknesses not addressed by the Green Revolution.
Just the teeniest passing reference to the benefits of agricultural biodiversity, especially for the farmers who did not get much out of the Green Revolution, would have pleased me no end.
There’s more here: apparently Patil’s speech was a curtain-raiser for FAO Director General Jacques Diouf. But the Indian papers don’t seem to be recording what he said.
Growing tea herbs
Want to grow a tea-garden? My mother-in-law unavailable for comment.
Educated fruit
This story — EARTH University Bananas and Pineapples Arrive in Whole Foods Markets’ Stores in the Southeast — needs a bit of unpacking.
There is an agricultural university in Costa Rica called EARTH; Escuela de Agricultura de la Región Tropical Húmeda. EARTH was founded in 1990 on a former banana plantation, and has its own model banana farm. Also, two pineapple plots. It aims to teach a kind of ethical agriculture. Profits from the sales to Whole Foods Markets support scholarships and research and investment in pineapple production. The Southeast in the story refers to Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Even though Whole Foods Markets is an 800 lb gorilla, on balance this is probably A Good Thing.