There’s an interesting paper in the latest Pedologia. Researchers grew Cavendish bananas in all combinations of with and without an endoparasitic nematode, and with and without an earthworm. They found that the banana plants did better when there were earthworms around, which slightly alleviated the root damage done by the nematodes and made more nutrients bioavailable. This is a great illustration of the importance of having an understanding of agricultural biodiversity as a whole, in the sense of all the different organisms — including crops, pests, symbionts, whatever — that interact in a farming landscape, affecting each other’s performance. These kinds of interactions are what organic agriculture aims to maintain, and why silver bullets rarely work.
Basmati rice on the rise
India’s Financial Express has a piece describing some of the recent history of Basmati rice. I guess it’s a fairly familiar story, but a couple of things stood out for me as I read it. One was that India and Pakistan “are planning to jointly claim rights for geographical indications (GIs) for this aromatic long grain rice.” Another was that the “European Union … is in favour of duty derogation for import of Basmati having pure parental lines.” So not landraces, just newly bred Basmati varieties? Finally, I found the link between Basmati and organic agriculture intriguing.
Making money from urban agriculture
An entrepreneurial approach to farming in the city.
The value of organic farming
Organic farming again today. I’ve come across two papers from opposite ends of the world on this subject which it may be worth discussing together.
The first, from New Zealand, describes an experimental attempt to put a value on the ecosystem services provided by different pieces of arable land near Canterbury. That’s interesting – and difficult – enough, but the authors did this for both conventional farms and neighbouring organic farms. Values for the following services were calculated: biological control of pests, soil formation, mineralization of plant nutrients, pollination, services provided by shelterbelts and hedges, hydrological flow, aesthetics, food, raw materials (fibre, fuelwood, pharmaceuticals etc.), carbon accumulation, nitrogen fixation and soil fertility.
The results were that organic fields provided ecosystem services to the tune of US$ 4,600 per hectare per year, compared to US$ 3,680 for conventional fields: “there were significant differences between organic and conventional fields for the economic value of some ecosystem services.†Now, that must be associated with increased (agro)-biodiversity in the organic fields – more natural enemies, more pollinators, more earthworms, more medicinal plants etc. – but this was not measured in the study.
The other paper did compare diversity in organic and conventional farms, but only for plant at the species level, and no attempt was made to calculate values. Working in the south of England, the authors found significantly more plant diversity in organic arable fields as compared to conventional fields – though no differences in the plant diversity of other types of habitats within farms, such as woodland fragments and hedgerows.
I suppose what we need is a combination of these approaches, bringing together diversity assessment with valuation. Because in the end we’re only going to be able to conserve biodiversity if we can adequately value it.
Subsidise this
There is plenty of analysis out there on the topic of agricultural subsidies and their actual or potential effect on things like growth of the farm sector, productivity, rural population levels and employment rates, farmers’ incomes and the number and average size of farms. But I haven’t seen much empirical data – or even theoretical discussion – of what subsidies (or the lack of them) mean for agrobiodiversity on farms. The data and discussion must be out there, it’s just that I don’t know the agricultural economics literature well enough to even know where to look.
So it was kind of interesting that I happened across two pieces of work in the past couple of weeks that shed some – albeit oblique – light on the subject. A 2003 article on The New Farm looks at what happened in New Zealand when agricultural subsidies were phased out: starting in 1984, the kiwis kept “a basic social security framework … funding for agricultural research, … and measures to keep agricultural pests from leaping around the world, and (did) away with the rest.â€Â
The New Zealand experience strongly suggests that most supposed objectives of agricultural subsidies and market protections – to maintain a traditional countryside, protect the environment, ensure food security, combat food scarcity, support family farms and slow corporate take-over of agriculture – are better achieved by their absence.
The paper suggests that the end of subsidies forced farmers to diversify, embrace organic methods, let marginal land revert to bush and innovate furiously, including by adopting new varieties. It’s hard to be entirely sure from the information presented, but on balance it would seem that (agricultural) biodiversity was better conserved and better used after subsidies ended.
I also came across a newly-released FAO paper entitled “Long Term Farming Trends. An Inquiry Using Agricultural Censuses,†a meta-analysis of 43 agricultural censuses across 17 countries. The authors look at differences among countries, and changes in the last 30 years or so, in things like land inequality and farm size, but also crop diversification, by which they basically mean the extent to which non-staple crops are being grown. They found, for example, that small farms tend to concentrate on staple crops more than bigger farms do, and that agricultural openness (i.e. lack of subsidies) “is correlated with diversification away from staple crops.†Though this relationship did not hold for countries with high population levels, the result concords with what happened in New Zealand.
You see what I mean when I said that the light being shed is at best oblique. Neither paper discusses diversity within crops much (or at all!), and their concept of “diversification†was somewhat crude. That wasn’t really their aim, so you can’t blame the authors. But with WTO members discussing the freeing up of agricultural markets (when they manage to discuss anything at all), I do wonder whether agricultural economists are devoting enough (or any) thinking to the possible effects on agricultural biodiversity. I look forward to being reassured by someone out there.