Category: Policy

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Nibbles: Brand new tool, Baseline, Orange cassava, Food non-crisis, ILRI on the frontline, WorldFish

In recognition of the fact that I’ve spent the past week at CIMMYT up to my ears in the CGIAR, an all-CGIAR edition!

  • CCAFS unleashes hell. Well, Climate Analogues anyway. No, wait…
  • How does CCAFS measure impact anayway? Well, by documenting progress in adaptation relative to a baseline, of course. What I want to know is how the baseline captures within-crop diversity.
  • Meanwhile, HarvestPlus is having another impact of its own. Well, I guess we’ll really have to wait for the health studies to be sure, but anyway.
  • And speaking of impact, IFPRI now says that surveys show that the food crisis was not really a crisis for the poor, where simulations say it was. Now what?
  • ILRI remembers the visit of Angela Merkel, and, probably unrelatedly, discovers the joys of fermentation.
  • WorldFish got a brand new website. Does Climate Analogues work for fish?
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Funding for agrobiodiversity: problem solved

If everyone who depends on a plant-based diet were to contribute just one cent a year to the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, the result would be a fund of $70 million a year. That would conserve an awful lot of agrobiodiversity.

This revolutionary idea is not, I confess, entirely original. It sprang, more or less fully formed, shortly after I read Entertainment Value: Should the Media Pay for Nature Conservation? by Paul Jepson, of Oxford University, and his colleagues, in today’s Science.

Jepson et al. point out that broadcasters make a bunch of money by showing us the wonders of nature and yet they contribute little to its conservation. By the same token, I reckon that people who eat make little contribution to the conservation of the agricultural biodiversity on which their food security, now and in the future, depends.

The devil is in the details, I know, and Jepson et al. have some nifty discussion of those details as they would apply to broadcasters. But think about it. One cent a year. Even if you’re on less than a dollar a day, that ought to be affordable.

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Brainfood: Early farmers, Ecological restoration, IPRs, Soil bacterial diversity, Perenniality, Carrot diversity, Earthworm mapping

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Nepal refuses hybrid maize aid, blames International Treaty

Where’s a Treaty lawyer when you need one? SciDev.net reports that a joint USAID/Monsanto project to introduce farmers in Nepal to the benefits of hybrid maize varieties has run into a brick wall because civil society organizations in Nepal say it:

“could replace local varieties, increase Nepal’s dependence on imported seed and pave the way for the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops later because of weak biotechnology regulation.”

As a result of a meeting in November, neither USAID nor the Government of Nepal will say whether the project is to go ahead. Fair enough, I reckon. Countries should be free to refuse “aid” if it doesn’t suit their other policy goals. But here’s the bit that doesn’t make sense, a quote from Hari Dahal, a spokesman for the Nepal Ministry of Agriculture.

“Mass importation of hybrid seed goes against our obligations under the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture,” he told SciDev.Net. “If the partnership seeks to improve our own hybrid seeds, then an agreement is possible.”

A senior ministry official told SciDev.Net on the condition of anonymity: “If we import hybrid seed our local varieties will disappear. The rights of the farmers will be in the hands of private companies.”

Can that be right, that importing hybrid seeds goes against International Treaty obligations by putting the rights of the farmers “in the hands of private companies”? Or is that just a face-saving reason to turn down the generosity of USAID and Monsanto? I wish SciDev.net had asked someone.