Category: Markets

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Promotion of new crops and its effects

Following on from yesterday’s post, which looked at the UNEP-WCMC report on the ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, including agricultural biodiversity, I wanted today to signal the publication by the International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) of a new position paper which is somewhat related, and of which I am a one of the authors. ((Dawson, I.K., Guarino, L. and Jaenicke, H. (2007) Underutilised Plant Species: Impacts of Promotion on Biodiversity. Position Paper No. 2. International Centre for Underutilised Crops, Colombo, Sri Lanka.)) This looks at the impact of promoting underutilised plant species (UPS) on overall levels of biodiversity in farming systems.

ICUC’s position on biodiversity is that its promotion should not be viewed as an “end in itself.” Rather, diversity needs to be “conserved through use,” or the livelihood opportunities it presents and the other services that it provides to the poor, both primary producers and local product processors, now and for the future. The significant nutritional and other health benefits received by consumers further afield in, e.g., urban areas and in other countries, through being able to access a more diverse range of foods, medicines and other products, should, however, also not be neglected.

Clearly, there are significant benefits that can accrue to poor families and communities, as well as others, through the promotion of one or more UPS — better nutrition, health, income etc. However, such promotion can result in the erosion of diversity in other crops, and in the agricultural landscape as a whole. If that happens, any benefits which UPS promotion delivers in the short term could be outweighed by long-term negative effects on the provision of the sorts of ecosystem services the WCMC paper discussed. ((We also discuss in our paper the complexity of the linkages between diversity, productivity and stability.))

In the ICUC paper, we look at the possible methods that can be used to promote UPS and suggest a number of conditions that should be met if such interventions are not to have undesired effects on biodiversity and the services it provides:

  • Possible consequences of promotion for agricultural and natural biodiversity should be described in advance, in order to assess potential livelihood and conservation risks.
  • Specific incentives that support diversification should be included when promotion of a UPS carries significant risks for biodiversity.
  • Particular actions that are known to support biodiversity should be used during promotion, e.g. improving germplasm access and supporting “intelligent markets” for products.
  • The consequences of promotion activities for biodiversity, and the linked impacts on livelihoods, should be monitored.

“Intelligent markets” are ones that improve both incomes and environmental management. Developing such markets “will involve educating producers and microprocessors in how to diversify their activities, encouraging value chain development, and supporting DO [denomination of origin] and related initiatives.” I particularly wanted to highlight this point because, coincidentally, FAO has just published a report on “Approaches to linking producers to markets” which looks at how best to help farmers organize themselves to supply identified markets. ((Andrew W. Shepherd (2007) Approaches to linking producers to markets: A review of experiences to date. Agricultural Management, Marketing and Finance Occasional Paper 13. FAO, Rome.))

We’ve had a few examples of this on the blog lately, haven’t we? They have ranged from the Ojibwa and their wild rice to the “under the sun” cheeses of Italy just in the past few days. Is it a zeitgeist thing?

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Transhumance in central Italy

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Another interesting thing about the Gran Sasso (pictured above in a photo I took a few days ago) that is related to agricultural biodiversity, apart from the famous lentil I talked about earlier ((And thanks to Lorenzo for adding some useful details to the post.)), is that its grazing lands are at one end of a famous transhumance route.

Transhumance is the seasonal movement of livestock in search of pasture. The route in question, the Royal Shepherd’s Track, has been proposed as a World Heritage Site. Its other end is at Capitanata, near Foggia, almost 300 km away to the southeast.

The Track may have been in use for a thousand years, but until recently the future of this way of life in Europe was bleak:

…though transhumance seemed doomed a few decades ago, all of a sudden — thanks to the commitment of a number of dedicated players as well as support from people in high places (the EU, Slow Food) — it looks like it’s due for a reprieve…

A key player in the transhumance revival is Roberto Rubino of Anfosc, ((Associazione nazionale formaggi sotto il cielo, or the National Association of Cheeses Under the Sky.)) an Italian organisation devoted to quality cheeses made from the milk of animals that live outdoors (‘sotto il cielo’) in ancient pastures rich with hundreds of different grasses, wild flowers and herbs instead of being shut up in stables and pumped with artificial food…

Patrick Fabre of the Maison de la Transhumance in St Martin de Crau, Provence, is singing from the same hymn sheet. Like Rubino, he notes that animals fed naturally and grazing out in the open are healthier, while the meat (and/or cheese) they produce is of superior quality and distinctive flavour. Some of these regional products (Sisteron lamb, fromage d’alpage) enjoy Label Rouge and/or Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status, and command a corresponding premium.

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The Ojibwa and wild rice

Smithsonian Magazine has a short article, photos and a video online about a Native American tribe called the Ojibwa, who live in northern Minnesota, and their close connection with wild rice, “manoomin,” or Zizania aquatica. ((Thanks to the Food Museum for pointing to the story.)) We talked about this before. Ricing is central to the Ojibwa’s founding story, and also a welcome source of income (unemployment is at 50%):

The White Earth Land Recovery Project, run by political activist and tribe member Winona LaDuke, was started 18 years ago to preserve the harvest and boost the tribe’s share of the proceeds. It operates a mill on the reservation and markets Native Harvest wild rice to specialty stores around the country (and through nativeharvest.com). Ojibwa wild rice is one of only five U.S. products supported by the Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity, an international organization based in Italy that aims to preserve traditional or artisan foods.

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I say kumato

The FreshPlaza piece on the kumato is not very long. But it does manage to squeeze in a lot of interesting information. The kumato is a tomato that ripens from green to dark brown. It is the result of a conventional breeding programme which involved a wild species. And it is just coming up to its first harvest in Australia. This definitely deserved more investigation.

There’s no doubt it looks pretty extraordinary. But the most intriguing thing about the kumato is that the wild species involved in its development may be from the Galapagos.

Now, Lycopersicon cheesmaniae from the Galapagos Islands has been used to breed dark orange tomatoes before, though it does not have a dark brown skin like the kumato. ((This species was actually published as L. cheesmanii, after Evelyn Cheesman, but that was incorrect, as the Latinists among us will know, as Ms Cheesman was a woman and the specific epithet therefore requires a feminine ending.)) Check out this excerpt from an article celebrating the late great tomato geneticist and explorer Prof. Charles M. Rick in 1997, five years before his death:

Rick’s research led him on 15 genetic scavenger hunts to Andean South America, the homeland of the tomato, where he hunted for wild tomato varieties carrying useful genes. Among his discoveries were wild tomatoes growing near the tidelands of the Galapagos Islands, despite salty sprays that would have stunted or killed a domestic tomato plant.

Or again:

An excellent lecturer, Rick was much sought after by universities who valued both his rigorous science and his humor and flair for storytelling. A perennial favorite involved his frustrations in trying to germinate wild tomato seeds collected from the Galapagos Islands. The emerging mystery of how the plants reproduce in the wild was only resolved after the seeds were “processed” by passing through the digestive track of a Galapagos tortoise, resulting in vigorous seedlings.

The kumato should actually be the Kumato©. It was bred by Syngenta, and first released in the UK in about 2004, I think. But the Roguelands Heirloom Vegetable Seeds Company also has 40 different dark brown to black-skinned varieties in its collection, and says black tomato varieties first appeared in the 19th century in Ukraine.