Category: Policy

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Nibbles: Seed access, Funding genebanks, Vote for me dammit, Quality AND yield, Floating gardens, Chocography, Wine heritage double, Uzbeki bread

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Climate smart agriculture = diverse agriculture, and vice versa

USAID is seeking feedback on the climate smart agriculture (CSA) strategy of its Feed the Future programme. Recall that CSA has three objectives 1

  • Sustainably increasing agricultural productivity and incomes.
  • Adapting and building resilience to climate change.
  • Reducing and/or removing greenhouse gas emissions, where appropriate.

So it’s that triple-win we’re after, and it’s good to see diversification being highlighted in that context by the strategy document:

In general, Mission FTF programs work within diversified production systems that reflect farmer choice around crops, livestock or fish although one value chain may be the focus. Diversification includes not only the number of crops, but also using a wider range of improved varieties and staggered planting times for a given crop. Over a longer time period, crop choices by farmers may shift as risks with one crop rise while another crop option is viewed as a safer bet. Thus diversification can be a strategy for managing risk and optimizing returns, particularly when informed by information on potential shocks, seasonal forecasts and long term climate trends. Ultimately, it will be farmers who directly determine their risks, but FTF programs can help widen the array of appropriate options that confer greater resilience as well as more efficient production with a concomitant reduced GHG footprint.

But why a wider range of only improved varieties? Don’t landraces or varietal or other types of mixtures have any role to play at all? And why mention staggered planting times, but not intercropping, say?

And, most importantly, why no mention at all of conservation of crop diversity as a prerequisite for diversification, and the role of genebanks in that? After all…

…it is likely that some (if not all) countries will need germplasm that is currently grown elsewhere to adapt.

And where is that going to come from if not genebanks? You can let USAID know until noon on August 14, 2015.

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Nagoya marches on in the EU

It seems that an attempt by Dutch and German plant breeders to get the EU to reconsider its ratification of the Nagoya Protocol has been unsuccessful. The breeders had said that the regulation…

…was insufficiently clear and created disproportionate red tape and additional expenses for their businesses.

Ouch. But what of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture? Wouldn’t the quite different access and benefit sharing system it established alleviate at least some of the breeders’ concerns? Well, maybe.

Regarding other avenues for plant breeders specifically, Article 2(2) of the Regulation in principle allows an exemption for genetic resources for which alternative “access and benefit-sharing” mechanisms are governed by “specialised international instruments”. Some commentators have argued that this could in theory allow at least some plant breeders to evade 2 the Nagoya Protocol using the benefit-sharing procedures of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, as some industry leaders have also suggested. However, it remains untested, whether such an exemption would be upheld in practice.

To which I would say: why don’t the breeders in question do that testing? I’m not sure whether any of the ones involved in querying Nagoya specialize in breeding for organic agriculture, 3 but if it’s true what they’re saying about “additional expenses,” the new regulations would hit that segment particularly hard. A recent report points out that:

Organic plant breeding is of common interest and requires long-term funding. It is a common good with socio-environmental benefits greater than are mirrored by the modest royalties of its market value.

All the more reasons to test the International Treaty, and indeed make sure it works. Incidentally, recommendation 6 of the report (p. 19) will resonate with breeders — organic, and not so much — everywhere. And it might also be extended to genebanks (which unfortunately the report doesn’t mention):

Public awareness about the importance of plant breeding should be dramatically enhanced. It is literally in everybody’s best interest to develop an awareness of the foundational role that seeds play in health and nutrition. Since this topic is not always easy to communicate, new forms of communication should be sought. Hitherto, only breeders have been pushing for organically bred plant varieties, now consumers should start pulling retailers to further develop the market.

Meanwhile, various stakeholderts are gearing up to enforce the new rules, and monitor compliance, for example in the UK. The International Treaty came into force years ago in the EU, but I don’t recall frantic meetings being organized at the time to cope with it.

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Rational botanical gardens

The 7th European Botanic Gardens Congress is on this week, in Paris. You can follow it in all the usual ways, or most of them anyway. I was struck by this tweet from the opening day, of a slide from the presentation by new BGCI director Paul Smith. Sounds a lot like what we’re trying to do with crop genebanks around the world too.

There’s a botanical garden that is conserving one crop almost single-handedly, but Diane Ragone, who’s in charge of the the National Tropical Botanical Garden and its breadfruit collection, is at a different, and I suspect more entertaining, conference in Trinidad.

LATER: Paul’s vision is more fully set out here.

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Brainfood: Weed collection, Japan vs China wheat, China wheat, Indian maize, Aromatic rice, African cattle, Food system vulnerabilities, SDGs & nutrition, Suitable days, Setaria phenotyping