Category: Policy

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Genetic Engineering discussion continues

Ewan R takes up the cudgels on genetic engineering:

If the western world would invest 1/100th of the amount it blows on new methods of killing people into transgenics developed by the public sector for specific small scale problems the world would likely be a far better place (and the requirement for the other 99/100ths of that arms budget would also probably fall off dramatically)

Not sure why he singles out the western world, but let that slide. To which James responds:

As I see it corporate research is a separate pot of money. If it doesn’t get spent on genetic engineering it’ll get spent on marker assisted breeding for similar traits in similar crops. If for some reason it couldn’t be spent on crop improvement at all, it’d probably be spent on… I don’t know… advertising. … [M]oney spent in commercial research isn’t at the expense of humanitarian projects so it isn’t (or shouldn’t be) begrudged. (And when/if nitrogen use efficiency and drought resistant traits make it to market they’ll be worth every penny of that price tag.)

Which neatly encapsulates several of the ideas swirling around. Ewan is probably right that 1% of the “death” budget would improve life for billions of people. And James is right that the many pots of money simply aren’t fungible. What strikes me is that these kinds of points are discussed at our level, but the high-ups just don’t seem interested. In my naiveté I’d have thought that world leaders, business titans and gung-ho philanthropists would be more interested in finding out whether different approaches to their concerns might in fact be worthwhile. I guess they have more important things to think about.

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Law of unintended consequences: Piracy edition

Pirates off the coast of Somalia have apparently claimed that they are “coastguards” and that their ransom demands are more in the nature of “fines” on foreign fishing fleets come to steal Somalia’s marine resources. So far, so much fish soup. But according to a study reported by the Associated Press, fishing folk in Somalia have seen increased catches:

“I remember some days I used to go to the sea early to catch fish and would return with no fish, but nowadays there are plenty. You can catch it everywhere,” said fisherman Bakar Osman, 50. “I do not know the reason but I think the foreign fishing vessels, which used to loot our fish, were scared away by pirates.”

Not only that, but the effects are being felt way down the coast in Kenya, where sport fishing is enjoying a boom.

Angus Paul, whose family owns the Kingfisher sports fishing company, said that over the past season clients on his catch-and-release sports fishing outings averaged 12 or 13 sail fish a day. That compares with two or three in previous years.
Somali pirates, Paul said, are a group of terrorists, “but as long as they can keep the big commercial boats out, not fishing the waters, then it benefits a lot of other smaller people.”

Not that that justifies piracy, no sirree. But it does suggest that some countries should borrow a gunboat or two and kick the pescopirates out of their waters. h/t Resilience Science.

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Breeders not so bad after all

ResearchBlogging.orgSpeaking of evil plant breeders:

It is generally thought that continuous selection among crosses of genetically related cultivars has led to a narrowing of the genetic base of the crops on which modern agriculture is based, contributing to the genetic erosion of the crop gene pools on which breeding is based.

But this may be another faulty meta-narrative. At least that’s what a group of researchers from the Dutch genebank say, as a result of a meta-analysis of 44 genetic diversity studies of the varieties of 8 crops released in successive decades. ((Wouw, M., Hintum, T., Kik, C., Treuren, R., & Visser, B. (2010). Genetic diversity trends in twentieth century crop cultivars: a meta analysis Theoretical and Applied Genetics DOI: 10.1007/s00122-009-1252-6)) This is the result:

trend

The meta analysis demonstrated that overall in the long run no substantial reduction in the regional diversity of crop varieties released by plant breeders has taken place.

Of course, that says nothing about the relative frequency at which these varieties have been grown by farmers, also an important aspect of overall diversity, along with how different the varieties are. Anyway, that decrease in the 60’s was only about 6%, and that has been reversed since then. How? Because of genebanks, say the authors.

In the 1960s and 1970s the introduction of the new Green Revolution-type cultivars for the major staple crops led to concerns on the disappearance of the world’s varietal wealth of crop plants. The widely shared concerns ultimately resulted in the establishment of a worldwide network of international genebanks hosted by the CGIAR research centres. The seed samples stored in these genebanks facilitated access of the world’s crop diversity to plant breeders world wide. It seems likely that the easy access to crop diversity provided by the genebanks, improved communication among breeders and easier exchange of seeds were factors contributing to the reversal of the initial trend in diversity reduction as observed in this meta analysis. Also the increased use of crop wild relatives for breeding and in recent years the use of synthetic wheats will have contributed to the observed diversity increase.

Well, it will be interesting to see, in due course, whether the restrictions on access which followed the Convention on Biological Diversity, had an effect, and whether the International Treaty on PGRFA eventually set the world to rights. As it was designed to do.

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EU Council conclusions on international biodiversity beyond 2010

6. ACKNOWLEDGES that agrobiodiversity is an important element of biodiversity with significant potential for improving global food security and for climate change mitigation and adaptation, INVITES Member States and the Commission to promote research and capacity development for the sustainable use of agrobiodiversity and ENCOURAGES Member States and the Commission to implement and further strengthen the ITPGRFA;

Interesting.

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Indigenous vs exotic trees in Kenya

I promised to reveal a silver lining to the black cloud of my mother-in-law’s forced felling of part of the eucalypt plantation she’s been tending and coppicing forever, her main source of firewood, so here goes. The sight of the newly bare patch of land made her start looking around for a source of seedlings for replanting, and a coincidental visit by some old friends of mine got her thinking that maybe she should go indigenous. At least partly, anyway. Eucalypts are too fast-growing to give up altogether. Her visitors were Lex Thomson and Randy Thaman, who I worked with in the Pacific, and were in Kenya for the International Agroforestry Congress. They noticed a few Prunus africana trees around her place, and told her about its potential. Lex has since left a comment about this on an earlier blog post of mine.

Anyway, after some searching around, Hilda (for that is her name) came across Mr Douglas Ndirangu Kirichu’s nursery at a place called Lari Forest Station in Uplands Division, a short drive along a passable dirt road from her farm. Mr Kirichu runs the Kimotu Environmental Group. He has about a hundred people who collect seeds from the surrounding forest, which he then raises to seedlings and sells, for KSh 30 each (that’s about USD 0.50). Apparently there’s a law that a community can only graze their animals in the forest if they also have a nursery raising indigenous tree seedlings for replanting. So that’s what Mr Kirichu’s group does. To the tune of about 30,000 seedlings when we visited him. ((Oh, and thanks to Hilda’s daughter Linda for taking the notes during our visit.))

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In addition to Prunus africana (mueri in Kikuyu), Mr Kirichu (that’s him on the left in the picture below) also has muna (Aningeria), mutamayo (Olea), mukoe (Dombeya), pondo and mukima (not sure what these are — maybe someone out there can help me?).

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So we bought a couple of each, of course. And Hilda got a dozen mueri to start off her plantation.

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And we planted them both up at the farm (thanks, GK!) and down in Nairobi. Maybe that made the holiday carbon neutral?

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