- From guerrilla gardens to guerrilla flowerboxes.
- “Kuwait needs to have a national genetic bank for plants and seeds by using the help of international experts…”
- Restoration of Satoyama and wetlands by local citizens in Japan.
- Lots of variation in salt tolerance among Georgian wild wheats.
Melaku Worede on the Seed Treaty
“Ex-situ gene banks have an important role to play. But we’ve been trying to save seed in gene banks for the last half century, with more failures than successes. To ensure a sustained supply of useful germplasm and a more dynamic system of keeping diversity alive, we must support farmers in maintaining seed in their field. If we lose this living diversity Africa and the world will not be able to adjust to climate change,” Worede said.
Africa, agriculture and climate change
“If agriculture in developing countries becomes more sustainable, if it increases its productivity and becomes more resilient against the impact of climate change, this should help to reduce the number of currently around one billion hungry people and offer better income and job opportunities,” said Alexander Mueller, FAO Assistant Director-General.
“Millions of poor farmers around the globe could help in reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” said Peter Holmgren, FAO focal point for the UN climate change negotiations. ((Agriculture is essential for facing climate change.))
OK. But what about preparing those self-same farmers to cope with climate change by giving them access to agricultural biodiversty?
Africa’s market for milk, meat and staple food crops such as maize, banana, sorghum, rice and millet stands at over $150 billion a year which is more than what it fetches from pet cash crops like coffee, tea and flowers.
Researchers say that seven out of ten Africans earn their living by engaging in subsistence farming making the sub-sector to be the continent’s market leader.
It is for this reason that the farmers are encouraged to embrace modern farming methods to produce more food in order to make economic sense.
On the other hand, governments are obliged to ensure that farm inputs are affordable and farmers have access to markets to sell their harvests at competitive prices to reap fruits of the labour. ((Food crops edging out cash crops on rural Africa’s incomes.))
OK. But does “modern farming” mean abandoning their agrobiodiversity and the skills to use it? And why is it government’s responsibility to make sure inputs are affordable? If government distorts price signals, we can’t blame farmers for doing the most profitable thing in the short term, even if it means losing their agricultural biodiversity and the skills to use it in the longer term.
Nibbles: Coca to cacao, BXV, Chinese gardening, Forest conservation, Amazon, Soil bacteria, Prairie, Genetics, Wildcats, Milk product
- “No a la droga, si al caucho y al cacao.”
- Spotting banana Xanthomonas wilt (BXW) with biochemical tests.
- The tree that owns itself. Take that, lawyers!
- “The old Chinese gardener in ragged blue coat and trousers with a wispy white beard who potters around smoking one of these long pipes with a tiny bowl — and a mongol cap, periodically performing elaborate grafting techniques on the plum tree.”
- Mexican coffee growers protect surrounding forest. Nepal forest community moving in similar direction?
- Mapping the competition between soy and forest in Brazil.
- Weird agrobiodiversity corner: pseudomonad bacteria help maize take up nutrients.
- Using herbicides to help prairie establishment (including sunflower wild relative).
- Stop press: “Agricultural genetics is one of the easier parts of the solution.”
- “…wildcats preferred resting sites in shelter structures near forest edges.”
- Video on Greek yogurt. Jeremy comments: “I’m going back to Crete.”
3rd meeting of the Governing Body of the ITPGRFA stumbles, moves on
I do hope you’re all keeping up to date with what’s happening in Tunis…