Policy

March 1, 2016November 12, 2018

More access to the data on the Access to Seeds Index needed?

I took Jeremy’s advice and have been doing some digging around the excellent Access to Seeds Index website. So have a lot of other people, of course, to extract what’s relevant to their own particular obsession, ¹ whether that be women farmers or small seed companies in Uganda or the informal seed sector. ²

Our hobbyhorse here is agricultural biodiversity, of course, and thankfully one of the measurement areas addressed by the Index “seeks to capture how companies handle genetic resources and IP in ways that support the opportunities for smallholder farmer development.” The Index is calculated separately (for this and a further 6 measurement areas) for field crops, vegetables and companies active in East Africa. Here’s the ranking for the Genetic Resources & Intellectual Property measurement area as far as vegetables are concerned.

There are brief text summaries to go along with this ranking, as well as those for field crops and East Africa, but you have to do some jumping around on the website to get them, so I’ve taken the liberty of pooling them all together below:

Syngenta is the only company with a formal commitment not to pursue or enforce patents and applications in seeds or biotechnology in least-developed countries for private use by subsistence farmers. Companies provide access to their genetic resources. Monsanto, DuPont Pioneer, Dow AgroSciences and Bayer all collaborate with local partners to provide access to specific genetic material or biotechnology traits. This ranges from research on insect-resistant Bt cowpea and water-efficient maize. Support for public gene banks, important for the conservation and use of region-specific crop diversity, is common among global seed companies. But support for local gene banks in Index countries is largely overlooked. An exception for field crops is KWS, which supports public gene banks in Peru and Ethiopia… An exception among vegetable seed companies is East-West Seed, which supports gene banks in Indonesia and Thailand… Whereas global companies have formal commitments in place, most actual activities for the conservation and use of genetic diversity are found among regional companies. East African Seed, Kenya Seed Company and Seed Co, among others, partner with multiple local seed banks and global research institutes. NASECO and Kenya Seed Company also donate their germplasm to public research partners.

You have to refer to the appropriate bit of the methodology to fully understand all that, which means p. 54 of a 70-plus page report.

Unfortunately the methodology write-up is not much help unpacking that “[s]upport for public gene banks … is common among global seed companies,” which I found a bit problematic. The relevant bit of the methodology says:

C.II.2 Support for Public Gene Banks. The company supports– through monetary and/or in-kind contributions — public gene banks and/or global funds and initiatives serving public gene banks in Index countries.

I have a feeling this refers to international public genebanks, rather than national ones, but frankly either way I find it difficult to conceive how this could be described as “common” among seed companies. One wonders if the raw data will be made available for others to make their own determinations. Some objections are already surfacing, including this one from Oxfam quoted in The Guardian:

The EU and other countries have signed the international treaty on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture. It would be interesting if the index would in future score how companies comply with this treaty.

Although, to be fair, one way that companies contribute to the Treaty is in fact already covered by the Index

C.II.7 Benefit Sharing. The company contributes to the Benefit-sharing Fund created by the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.

I would certainly love to see the raw data that went into calculating C.II.7 (and C.II.2 for that matter), as I cannot find anything on the website of the Treaty’s Benefit-Sharing Fund resembling a summary of the contributions made by companies.

March 1, 2016

Nibbles: Banana trouble, Celebrating Ethiopia, Potato nutrition, Kenyan veggies, Coffee history, Twitty book, Biodiversity loss vid

The musapocalypse gets an infographic.
Celebrating agricultural biodiversity in Ethiopia.
High calcium potato wild relatives in the news. No, really.
NY Times catches up with the Kenyan leafy green revolution.
The world’s prettiest (only?) coffee genealogy poster.
The great Michael Twitty’s long-awaited book on African-American foodways is out.
Nice video on biodiversity loss actually opens with Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

February 29, 2016February 29, 2016

Brainfood: PVP in Africa, Tomato disease resistance, Open source seeds, Barley protein, Improving roots, Bambara groundnut, Indian kodo millet, Cacao diversity, Washington heirloom beans, Mato Grosso cassava, Balanites biotech, Intensive Europe

Opportunities and Threats to Harmonisation of Plant Breeders’ Rights in Africa: ARIPO and SADC. While the intention of ARIPO and SADC is to create a single internal market for protected varieties in Africa, “the end result may look quite differently.”
Evaluation of Resistance to Ralstonia solanacearum in Tomato Genetic Resources at Seedling Stage. Out of 285 varieties from 21 countries in the Korean genebank, 4 may be resistant to bacterial wilt.
Following the Open-Source Trail Outside the Digital World: The Case of Open-Source Seeds. “…by not rejecting the idea of property, including intellectual property, but rather attempting to manage it differently, it creates its own enclosures.”
Grain protein concentration and harvestable protein under future climate conditions. A study of 108 spring barley accessions. Higher CO2 and temperatures lead to higher protein concentrations but lower yields, so lower harvestable protein. The good news is that there’s variation in the response of varieties.
How can we harness quantitative genetic variation in crop root systems for agricultural improvement? Apparently we still don’t have a mechanistic understanding of root growth, and we’ll need it if we’re going to improve function.
Bambara Groundnut for Food Security in the Changing African Climate. It’s nutritious, it’s drought tolerant, and it can be intercropped. What’s not to like?
Neutral and functional marker based genetic diversity in kodo millet (Paspalum scrobiculatum L.). Indian material falls into 4 groups, with Bihar being very diverse. African genepool and wild species should be useful in broadening base in India.
Origin, Dispersal, and Current Global Distribution of Cacao Genetic Diversity. We’ve come to the limit of the usefulness of the Pound Collection.
Exploring the role of local heirloom germplasm in expanding western Washington dry bean production. 24 bean varieties have been grown in the area for 20–130 years, representing a useful starting point for participatory plant breeding.
Growing Cassava (Manihot esculenta) in Mato Grosso, Brazil: Genetic Diversity Conservation in Small–Scale Agriculture. Lots of diversity within communities, and differences among communities. Varieties with same name not necessarily genetically similar.
Establishment of an in vitro propagation and transformation system of Balanites aegyptiaca. So?
Mapping cropland-use intensity across Europe using MODIS NDVI time series. Four indicators show highest cropping intensity in Germany, Poland, and the eastern European Black Earth regions, and lowest in eastern Europe outside the Black Earth region. Interesting to mash this up with agricultural biodiversity? Like earthworms?

February 26, 2016

Nibbles: Switchgrass mixtures, Groundnut genomes, Bean genome, New wild tomato, CC Down Under, Aussie foods, Natural history collections, Wheat genebanks, Pompeii vineyards, Colombian exhibition, Portuguese collard, Istanbul bostan, Kenyan adaptation, Norwegian adaptation, Hybrid wheat, GMO bananas, Indian organic, Coconut generator

If you’re going to grown switchgrass as a biofuel, grow it in variety mixtures.
The two wild parents of the cultivated peanut get sequenced.
As also does common bean from its Mesoamerican genepool. Happy International Year of Pulses.
New wild Aussie tomato gets a cool name. No word on when it will be sequenced. Or how long it will last.
Speaking of climate change in Australia, wine might be in trouble.
And more from Down Under: new book on indigenous Australian foods. Some of which may have been cultivated.
Lots of herbarium specimens have the wrong name. Well I never.
CIMMYT and ICARDA collaborate on wheat diversity.
Roman wine rising again from the ashes of Pompeii.
Exhibition on Colombia’s food plants.
Portuguese green broth is no doubt very nice, but definitely needs a new name.
The ancient urban gardens of Istanbul live on.
Kenya gets on top of using biodiversity for climate change adaptation. Or on top of developing a strategy for doing so, anyway.
Ola Westengen has a strategy, but you have to speak Norwegian to hear about it.
Hybrid wheat is 5 years away. How long have they been saying that?
The latest Rice Today has an article on genebank tourism by Mike Jackson (p. 39), who should know.
Iowa State University is offering $900 to eat 3 orange bananas.
Sahaju: saving agricultural biodiversity in India the organic way. Cheaper than $900 too.
Want to multiply up coconuts really fast? They know how to do it in the Philippines.

February 15, 2016February 15, 2016

Autonomous potato innovation in the Andes?

I have nothing against jua kali. In fact, I love the informal sector, without which life would be a lot more expensive, and less interesting, back home in Kenya. But a piece in The Guardian extolling its virtues, by Aditya Bahadur and Julian Doczi, researchers at the Overseas Development Institute, says some funny things about “frugal”, “bottom-up” and “autonomous innovation” in potato cultivation in Peru.

Some organisations already recognise the value of autonomous innovations for resilience. Practical Action supported indigenous communities in the Peruvian Andes to find a local solution to food shortages caused by bouts of extremely cold weather.

An externally led response might have led to these communities importing food or relocating. Instead, Practical Action helped them to rediscover an ancient process of cultivating native potato varieties that can survive temperatures as low as -35°C. In this way, communities have found a solution that is aligned with their culture and diet to survive extreme weather.

At first I thought this was something to do with chuño, the freeze-dried potato of the Andes. But the link to the Practical Action website doesn’t mention anything like that.

There are 256 varieties of potato that can survive the harsh conditions of the high Andes. Practical Action is helping families living at altitudes of 3800ft to maintain this crucial biodiversity by developing varieties of local potatoes, as well as improve technical aspects of production. These methods ensure people are able to get enough to eat, as well as an income at local markets.

A revolving fund for accessing native potato seeds and seeders for local production has been set up. Ongoing technical assistance is being established through the training of 40 Quechuan farmers, chosen by the community themselves, as technological leaders.

So, help with conserving and accessing adapted local varieties, and technical advice and training on production methods. Worthy, no doubt, but hardly “autonomous innovation,” nor can either really be described as “rediscover[ing] an ancient process of cultivating native potato varieties.” I’m sure there’s some cool jua kali going on to do with potatoes in the mountains of Peru. But this isn’t it.

And 256 hardy Andean varieties? Really? Not 257, perhaps?