Policy

February 20, 2014February 20, 2014

What’s up in seed laws?

The notion of farmers saving seed from one harvest to plant for the next is deeply ingrained, especially in ideas about subsistence and sustainable farming. Indeed, that process is usually seen as the foundation of all agriculture, to be abandoned at our peril. In the early 1990s, we saw attempts to shift the discussion on intellectual property from the farmer’s right to save seed of a formally-protected variety to the farmer’s privilege to do the same. Much of the rhetoric that attempts to stick it to The Seed Man focuses on seed saving, and the impact that F1 hybrids, GMOs and other evils will have on farmers who want to save their own seeds.

It is not surprising, therefor, that there’s a lot of sound and fury around the subject. From which melée I offer two snippets.

Bifurcated carrots is keeping a close eye on the progress of the proposed new European seed laws through the labyrinthine corridors of power. He’s hopeful that the lack of progress is a good thing, because it will start the whole process again.

While the seed industry thinks the proposal can be fixed with a few small changes, this is not the position of most seed related NGOs around Europe. It is certainly not our position. The current proposal is not without some good aspects, but overall it’s seriously flawed and should be rewritten.

James Ming Chen, a lawyer, will have no truck with any silly emotional, nostalgic idiocy.

Seed-saving advocates protest that compelling farmers to buy seed every season effectively subjects them to a form of serfdom. So be it. Intellectual property law concerns the progress of science and the useful arts. Collateral economic and social damage, in the form of affronts to the agrarian ego, is of no valid legal concern.

But would he actually prevent seed saving?

February 13, 2014February 13, 2014

Nibbles: Agroforestry slides, Sub1 slides, Fish slides, Fish in Neolithic, Silver bullets, Carbon credits, Camel domestication, Cuneiform barley

All of the presentations from the World Congress on Agroforestry.
Scuba rice in 13 slides.
You got off easy on that last one. Here’s 55 slides on fish biodiversity and the food supply.
Not much fish in the food supply of early farmers in Britain.
New IFPRI book highlights technologies to beat hunger. Includes plant breeding. But no fish?
Kenyan agroforestry organization gets C credits. Details sketchy though.
The Bible got it wrong on camels. And that’s all I’m saying about that.
Cuneiform tablets are so beautiful. Especially when they depict agricultural biodiversity. Via.

February 11, 2014February 12, 2014

Nibbles: Breeding data, Maize data, Bottle gourd origins, Agroforestry meet, EU seed, New pepper

Pssst, you breeder there? Need a data management system? IPB have got one for you going cheap…
Maybe you want to test that out on some CIMMYT wheat and maize lines? CIMMYT can help you out with a new database.
Bottle gourd: Out of Africa after all, by sea.
World Congress on Agroforestry social media mashup for Day 1.
The latest on the new EU legislation on the marketing of seeds.
New Piper species found in Ecuador, and it’s a doozy.

February 10, 2014February 10, 2014

Nibbles: Variety adoption data, Georgian biodiversity, Species migration, Agroforestry shindig, Perennial breeding, Pacific history, Livestock emissions, Dandelion rubber

New database on the adoption of modern varieties. No doubt will eventually include the ones coming out of this shiny new rice regional hub in Burundi.
Useful summary of what’s happening in agricultural biodiversity in Georgia. No mention of ITPGRFA ratification, alas. You can find previous editions of the newsletter of the CGIAR Regional Program for Sustainable Agricultural Development in Central Asia and the Caucasus here.
CSIRO come up with map of where and how fast species will move due to climate change.
And Google Earth now has the underlying climate data you need to do that kind of analysis.
World Congress on Agroforestry off the ground. You can follow on Twitter, #WCA2014. Also, you can read the blog. Do you remember when this type of thing didn’t even have an RSS feed?
Did we miss this thing of perennial grain breeding at the Land Institute when it came out a year ago?
Nice long podcast and Q&A from the Bishop Museum on the footprint Hawaiians left on their islands before contact. Great stuff on GIS analysis of suitability of ancient landscapes for taro and sweet potato. And, coincidentally, an equally long video clip on Pacific island landscapes more generally, and how they shaped the culture (and agriculture) of the Polynesians.
ILRI DG chides The Economist on article suggesting that the only way to decrease livestock emissions is to go industrial: “There simply is no moral equivalent between those making poor food choices and those with no food choices at all.”
New EU project on Russian dandelion does not seem to include boffins who recently turned off the rapid polymerization gene. And will they use the right species? And do some ex situ conservation? I’m not holding my breath on that last one.

February 10, 2014April 22, 2014

Brainfood: Genomics trifecta, Ex/in situ, Oat disease resistance, Drying beads, Biodiversity assessment, Maize models, Trees & nutrition, NTFP, Fortification

Maintaining Food Value of Wild Rice (Zizania palustris L.) Using Comparative Genomics. Cultivated cultivated rice assists in the breeding of cultivated wild rice. If you see what I mean.
Mining the Genus Solanum for Increasing Disease Resistance. The key is distinguishing the alleles from the paralogs.
Genetic Dissection of Aluminium Tolerance in the Triticeae. And the trifecta from the Genomics of Plant Genetic Resources book. Rye has most, barley least, and we know how they do it.
Dual Threats of Imperiled Native Agroecosystems and Climate Change to World Food Security: Genomic Perspectives. Genebanks are necessary but not sufficient.
Identification of new sources of resistance to powdery mildew in oat. In the wild species, natch.
Optimum ratios of zeolite seed Drying Beads® to dry rice seeds for genebank storage. 1:1 by weight.
The Biodiversity Forecasting Toolkit: Answering the ‘how much’, ‘what’, and ‘where’ of planning for biodiversity persistence. Yeah, but will it work with agricultural biodiversity?
How do various maize crop models vary in their responses to climate change factors? Enough to make using an ensemble best, not enough to doubt that temperature will be the main factor affecting yields by the end of the century.
Dietary quality and tree cover in Africa. More trees, more dietary diversity, more fruit & veg consumption, though up to a point.
The importance of local forest benefits: Economic valuation of Non-Timber Forest Products in the Eastern Arc Mountains in Tanzania. $42 million a year, spread over 2000 households.
Fortification: new findings and implications. It’s worked in the US for some nutrients, but not for others, and in some case we don’t understand how and why. We know in other cases it is unlikely to work. Nutritionists have to work together with plant breeders. And, we would add, the agricultural sector in general.