Category: Policy

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Agriculture important, World Bank discovers

The World Bank is suddenly all concerned about agriculture. Within a few days there’s the result of an independent evaluation of its assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, and the latest World Development Report, which focuses on agriculture for development. The NY Times has an article on the African report:

At a time of growing debate about how to combat hunger in Africa, the evaluation team recommended that the bank, the single largest donor for African agriculture, concentrate on helping farmers get the basics they need to grow and market more food: fertilizer, seeds, water, credit, roads.

Ah, seeds. If only it were that easy. The World Development Report 2008 actually refers to the spread of improved varieties as “slow magic” (p. 159, chapter 7), pointing out that crop improvement “has been enormously successful, but not everywhere.” Then, on page 259, in a discussion of the “global agenda for the 21st century,” the money quote:

Conserving genetic resources for future food security. Genetic resources and seeds have been the basis for some of the most successful agricultural interventions to promote growth and reduce poverty (chapter 7). Conserving the world’s rich heritage of crop and animal genetic diversity is essential to future global food security. Gene banks and in situ resources that provide fair access to all countries and equitably share the benefits are a global public good that requires global collective action.

Chapter 8, on Making Agricultural Systems more Environmentally Sustainable, should also make for interesting reading.

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The original sabbatical

Taking the easy way out, let’s just say that God was a good farmer. Every seven years, he told his chosen people, they must let the land of Israel rest and lie fallow. No sowing, no reaping, no working the vines. Just take it easy and give the land a chance. And a fallow year, called a schmita, began at the Jewish New Year last month.

“Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.”

I don’t actualy understand that; how are the poor and the stock to eat if noone is growing anything? But no matter. The weird part is, God told all Jews to take their sabbatical in the same year. So how are they supposed to feed themselves? Some take a sophisticated approach, selling their land to an accommodating gentile for a nominal sum. Thus it is no longer “their” land, they continue to work it (and to profit, if profits there be) and at the end of the sabbatical, they buy it back again. Some use science: fruit and vegetables are grown hydroponically, or on raised platforms, not in the land of Israel. I visited a research centre that was working on systems to delay the germination of wheat, so it could be sown in the previous year, grow steadily through the schmita, and be harvested the following year. They were also researching effective ways to miss a year of pruning grapevines.

But ultra-orthodox Jews are determined to close these loopholes. They think the government should subsidize farmers who do indeed let their fields lie fallow, in fact as well as in law. And they are creating opportunities for their neighbours. Farmers in Palestine, Turkey and elsewhere are now selling into the Israeli market, and business is better for them.

It’d be nice to think that a year of trading produce would help peace to grow between Israelis and their neighbours, but given the entrenched attitudes and conservative views that seem to have given rise to the very strict interpretation, that seems unlikely from the Israeli side. I wonder whether the Palestinian farmers, who will probably enjoy a better income this year, would see it as in their interests to promote peace.

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Religion and conservation

Leslie E. Sponsel, a professor of anthropology at Cornell, has an interesting article at Earth Portal ((Sponsel, Leslie (Lead Author); David Casagrande (Topic Editor). 2007. “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.” In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published September 22, 2007; Last revised October 18, 2007; Retrieved October 20, 2007].)) on “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.”

Since the 1990s, sacred places have emerged as a new frontier for interdisciplinary research on their own merits and also for their actual or potential relevance for biodiversity conservation. This reflects the emerging recognition in many sectors of the important role that religion and spirituality can play in environmentalism. In some ways attention to these phenomena is a natural development. Even secular approaches to environmental protection often become a kind of sacralization of a space, such as pursuing wilderness as an ideal. This is exemplified by John Muir (1838-1914), who experienced the forested mountains of the Western United States as a sacred place, and who was especially influential in the creation of the national park system.

Well, we saw something very similar in the previous post, with the “natural agriculture” of the adherents of the Shumei cult in Japan. Pity that Prof. Sponsel doesn’t deal with agricultural biodiversity at all in his article, it would have added an interesting dimension. The “sacralization of a space” doesn’t only apply to wilderness. Think of the certification of organic farms, or the agricultural landscapes inscribed in the list of World Heritage Sites.