Category: Policy

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Precarious, moi?

In the United States, there is no general consciousness of the precarious state of global agriculture.

That’s from economist Tyler Cowen in the NY Times. One solution might be to start with the precarious state of US agriculture. David Lobell could help with that. But then, if you can increase food exports in the face of a giant drought, what does that say about the state of your agriculture? And to anyone who can synthesize all that, a big thank you.

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Nibbles: Irish Famine book, Breeding for adaptation, Neolithic diets, Randy Thaman, Ecological Babylon, IPR for smallholders, Botanical gardens

  • Don’t underestimate the importance of a new book on the Irish Famine, despite the weird construction used in praising it.
  • Impossible to overestimate the importance of crop breeding for climate change adaptation. And would you like a presentation with that?
  • Cannot underestimate the diversity of early Neolithic diets. No, wait.
  • Difficult to overestimate the contribution made by Prof. Randy Thaman to the conservation of agrobiodiversity in the Pacific. One of several honoured by IUCN for services to conservation.
  • Fed up with linguistic tricks? Well, too bad, because here’s another one. It turns out you can use agricultural biodiversity terminology as examples to explain what’s wrong with ecology.
  • Here we go again. Easy to underestimate the importance of IPR legislation in enabling smallholders to conserve agrobiodiversity.
  • Plain impossible to list the x best botanical gardens in the world.
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Support a plant breeder

One of the strangest crowdsourcing appeals I’ve ever seen landed in my in-tray this morning. Sarvari Research Trust, onlie begetters of Sarpo potatoes, are looking for £5000 in order to bring a new variety to market. And the reason they need the money is that the variety has to be certified and approved by the UK government before it is allowed on sale. That’s how most agricultural biodiversity is managed in the European Union; if a variety isn’t registered, which costs money, it can’t be marketed. To protect us, obviously.

The Sarvari Trust says:

We can’t get grant funding for this kind of work because is thought to be near market research and therefore a private matter. Breeders of GM resistant potatoes do get grant support!

Frankly, I think that’s over-egging the pudding a little. The cost of testing and registering a variety is always going to be a “near-market” issue, and I doubt breeders of GM potatoes get support for that aspect of their work. The real scandal is that the fixed costs of variety registration are a huge burden for a small breeder, and trivial for a large one. And farmers and gardeners who would like access to a greater range of agricultural biodiversity are denied choice as a result.

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How much would it cost to save chocolate?

The cacao community has a global strategy out for the conservation and sustainable use of cacao genetic resources.

In order to safeguard the security of cacao diversity, on which the world depends for cocoa production now and in the future, and to ensure its accessibility and sustainable use, the Global Strategy has estimated the cost of annual recurrent management activities at 1,832,736 USD.

Doesn’t seem so much to ensure the world doesn’t run out of chocolate, now does it.

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Nibbles: Fertilizer tree, Indo-European, Human diversity, European pollinators, DNA data quality, Biodiversity maps, Organizzzzzz, Plantain