Category: Policy

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Science does food security

You’ll remember Jeremy waxing lyrical a few days back about a Science paper on “the challenge of feeding 9 billion people.” That paper now finds itself part of a special issue on food security. ((Which is also the subject of a NY Times blog post.))

In the 12 February 2010 issue, Science examines the obstacles to achieving global food security and some promising solutions. News articles introduce farmers and researchers who are finding ways to boost harvests, especially in the developing world. Reviews, Perspectives, and an audio interview provide a broader context for the causes and effects of food insecurity and point to paths to ending hunger. A special podcast includes interviews about measuring food insecurity, rethinking agriculture, and reducing meat consumption.

A lot of it is behind a paywall, but something that isn’t is Radically Rethinking Agriculture for the 21st Century. That radical rethink, in case you’re wondering, consists of using more biotechnology and saline water. Right.

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Competition for Svalbard?

A world class seed vault has been established on the Siachen Glacier to preserve India’s biological wealth for future generations, Dr. Ajay Parida, Executive Director, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation confirmed on Saturday.

The vault, which has a natural temperature between -20 and -40 celsius, will hold samples of rice, pulses, peas and beans and can be used for building food programmes across the nation.

This was at a meeting in which the Norwegian Minister of Agriculture and Food Lars Peder Brekk also participated. I wonder if Mr Brekk mentioned the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

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Fertilizers: downside seen in China

It really does seem tragic that people need to make their own mistakes, rather than learn from others’. Latest case in point: soils in China are being destroyed by excessive use of fertilizers, which is making the soils too acid to support plant growth. Yields have already dropped 30-50% in some places. The conclusion that profligate and ignorant use of fertilizers comes from a paper published in Science by F.S. Zhang at China Agricultural University in Beijing and colleagues. That is behind a paywall, but there is a report in Nature News.

“They see the green leaves but they don’t see the impact on the soil. If they have a poor crop they think more fertilizer is needed, making matters worse,” Zhang says. Farmers routinely apply double and sometimes triple the necessary amount, he says. Better education could provide a simple solution to the fertilization problem.

People who promote “more fertilizers” as a panacea should consider that they need to deliver more than merely fertilizers.

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Review calls for support of Kew genebank

The independent review of Kew Gardens commissioned by Defra is just out. It has some very nice things to say about the Millennium Seed Bank, and quite rightly so.

The work of the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB) is particularly impressive, and the MSB has forged partnerships with more than 120 institutions in 54 countries. Kew has advised many of these partners on how to set up and run seed banks for themselves. This has included, for example, the delivery of germination protocols to a network of 38 national seed banks in sub-Saharan Africa; and the use of seeds from 500 species stored in the MSB for restoration and species recovery programmes worldwide.

Which leads to a recommendation that Defra should pull out its wallet.

The MSB’s operating costs over the past nine years have averaged £4.1 million per annum. They were funded until the end of 2009 by the Millennium Commission. The external funding stream that has been going to the MSB to assist in the running costs ceased from January 2010 and Kew will now either have to fund the MSB from its own resources; seek alternative sources of funding, particularly by building the Millennium Seed Bank Partnership; or downsize or even close the MSB. For the reasons set out in Chapter 2, the review team believes the MSB should be of very high priority for Kew, and it recommends that Kew should be given additional interim funding by Defra, which tapers down over three years, to enable Kew to gather the additional funding support that it needs. We recommend that £3 million be given for this purpose in 2010/11 and £1.5 million in 2011/12.

This is not a particularly good time to make a call on the public finances in Britain, but surely the Millennium Seed Bank is too big — and important — to fail. Defra will no doubt find the money. And so they should.

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Nibbles: EoL, Mixed farming, Conservation medicine, Indicators, Vitamin A, Hamburger, Rewilding, Tejate