The philosophy behind the One Acre Fund is clearly of a piece with that of the Millennium Villages and the Malawi fertilizer subsidy programme: giving farmers seeds, fertilizers, some advice and a market outlet will do wonders for livelihoods. In a way, it’s a no-brainer: of course it will! And it seems churlish and petty and ungenerous to add the canonical “at least for a while” qualifier, and bring up sustainability and resilience and suchlike when lives are at stake, the need urgent, and the amounts of money involved relatively small. So I won’t go down that route. But I will point out, and not for the first time, that if you are going to do something like this, or this, please first have a look at the amount and uniqueness of the agrobiodiversity you may end up displacing. And I’ll also repeat, again not for the first time, that such initiatives are why we need a global early warning system for genetic erosion. It’s easy to start. All we need is a participatory online mapping platform. You can even submit data via SMS these days!
A Commission meets
All go at FAO again with the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture holding its 12th meeting. One of the things on the agenda is consideration of the 2nd report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the final version is available online as a large pdf). There’s also a side event on crop wild relatives, among others. IISD has the low-down every day.
World Food Day celebrated
It’s all go here at FAO, what with World Food Day and all. Security tight, no visitors allowed, etc. The theme this year is “Achieving food security in times of crisis.” We’ll let you know if agrobiodiversity comes up…
Gates embraces diversity?
This post has two purposes. The first is to try and explain the shenanigans yesterday. That’s possibly of interest to only a few geeks who care about journalistic ethics. 1 The second is warmly to welcome some of the comments made by Bill Gates as he announced a further US$120 million for agricultural research. That should be of interest to everyone except monocultural thinkers.
Second things first. Judging from the stories we’ve seen, the Gates’ announcement might just mark a shift in the Foundation’s priorities. 2 That pesky iAfrica.com site, which started all the trouble, has perhaps the longest report, which contains several nuggets.
Gates will warn that as scientists, governments, and others strive to repeat the successes of the original Green Revolution, they should be careful not to repeat its mistakes, such as the overuse of fertilizer and irrigation.
“The next Green Revolution has to be greener than the first,” Gates will say. “It must be guided by small-holder farmers, adapted to local circumstances, and sustainable for the economy and the environment.”
That’s as clear a statement as any we’ve seen that Africa’s problems will require a huge diversity of solutions, and that African farmers may well know what they need. But this is the real money quote:
Gates will say that major breakthroughs in the fight against hunger and poverty are now within reach [and] he will caution that progress toward alleviating global hunger is “endangered by an ideological wedge that threatens to split the movement in two.”
On one side, he will say, there are groups that support technological solutions to increase agricultural productivity without proper regard to environmental and sustainability concerns. On the other, there are those who react negatively to any emphasis on productivity.
“It’s a false choice, and it’s dangerous for the field,” Gates will say. “It blocks important advances. It breeds hostility among people who need to work together. And it makes it hard to launch a comprehensive program to help poor farmers. The fact is, we need both productivity and sustainability — and there is no reason we can’t have both.”
That, quite simply, is music to our ears. We’ve been saying the same ourselves at every opportunity. And given that today is a rather special day for us, we’re going to delude ourselves into thinking that someone out there reads us and even pays attention to our ramblings.
Thanks.
Nibbles: Sheep, Syrup, Antioxidants, Urban flora, Politics, Erosion, Prince, India and climate change
- British hill sheep in trouble.
- Canadian maple syrup in trouble.
- Fruits good for you.
- Native urban plants in trouble. How many crop wild relatives among them?
- “If the world learned to feed itself half a century ago, why are there now more hungry people than ever before?” Er … I dunno. Either-orism?
- “Almost all of the 300 experts at a two-day food forum in Rome this week agreed that between them they had all the answers to how to feed the world in 2050, but doubted they would have the political support to do it.” Alert the media!
- “Erosion of Crop Diversity Worrying“. Malawian plant breeder speaks.
- British wildflowers in trouble, prince says? How many crop wild relatives among them? Does prince know? Care?
- Indian crops in trouble.