Category: Policy

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An evaluation of Gates Foundation and agriculture

The Seattle Times (which one might consider Bill Gates’ local rag) has an interesting and to my mind well-balanced article that attempts to evaluate the Gates Foundation’s effort to support agricultural development in Africa. I’m not going to sum up the arguments here; there’s little point. I am, however, going to draw attention to two aspects of the article.

First, Rajiv Shah, the director of agriculture programs for the Gates Foundation, is “a young medical doctor with an economics degree and background in health policy”. He’s probably also stunningly bright and very able. But who is advising him, and how does he evaluate their advice?

Secondly, the article tells us that:

At a village in rural Uganda recently, Shah sat on the ground with a group of women readying large, round banana-tree bulbs for planting. A staple crop, the banana trees had been suffering from bacterial wilt that cut fruit harvests in half.

This is part of the search for permanent solutions, rather than Band-aid quick fixes, but the fact is, we know how to manage banana bacterial wilt. We really do, especially in the short and medium-term. So while breeding resistant varieties is one potential answer it is an answer to a not-very-urgent-or-important question. Is the Gates Foundation doing anything to help people manage banana bacterial wilt now? I don’t think so, and that’s why many people who are actually working on agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa find some parts of AGRA and the Gates Foundation’s efforts to be just a little wide of the mark.

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Apples unmoved

One of the bits of news we missed while we were resting and relaxing as hard as we were: the UK’s collection of apples and other fruits is staying at Brogdale. This may strike you as no-news news. It isn’t.

Long-standing readers will remember that the UK government put management of the site out to tender, and that two of the proposals required moving the entire collection to a new site. This seemed like a slightly daft idea, at least from our perspective. So it is good to relate that the management contract was awarded to Reading University, who will be leaving the collection where it is.

The Visitor Centre and sales areas are being expanded, and it could be that the collection is now poised to play a more important role in spreading the good news about all those fruit varieties that aren’t available in little plastic bags in the supermarket.

It has been a long and complex struggle, and it is not clear what the future of the Brogdale Horticultural Trust. We’ll try and keep informed.

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Organic seeds enmeshed

Grain has published a new briefing on “the politics of organic seed certification.” It makes all the usual points, most of which boil down to the fact that when there is a fixed cost for something — anything — bigger players benefit. There’s plenty of good information in the briefing, and in the annex that details the requirements of different regulatory bodies. But the one fundamental question I don’t see asked, let alone answered.

Why did the bodies that represent organic growers even contemplate legislation that would make “organic” seeds compulsory?

Seriously, this is something that has bothered me from the start. Lord

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Dope

The answers are in, over at the World Bank’s discussion of its 2008 report Agriculture for Development. There’s a lot of good sense in the report author’s comments, such as the need for country (and region) specific approaches and the care that needs to be taken over commercialization, subsidies and the private sector. There are also some things one might take issue with. For example:

Vitamin A enhanced rice is an example of propoor technology under development which could save millions of lives. This will entail increasing support to public national and international research for crops grown and consumed largely by the poor, as well as strengthening capacity in biosafety evaluation and regulation.

I confess I am really, really amazed to find official World Bank support for this point of view. It is so much easier to boost vitamin A intake by broadening the diet to include orange fruits and vegetables and dark green leafy vegetables. One has to wonder why the World Bank continues to push this particular example of genetic modification when there are others that would be much more defensible if one really wanted to go down that route.

The response to a question about climate change had this to say:

The most urgent investments are in crop varieties tolerant to drought and heat, and irrigation systems. Also countries need to strengthen responses to increase volnerability through crop insurance schemes and safety nets.

New varieties may be part of the solution, but it may be considerably more effective to give farmers the access to a wider range of genetic variability and the capacity to make their own selections of widely adapted, and adaptable, populations in order to be able to cope with climate change. At least that should be tried. Properly.

I confess I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the pretty vague answer to my own question, about quick wins. But Luigi, who asked whether the Bank undervalues diversity in agricultural systems, will presumably be happy with part of the answer:

International support to the Global Crop Diversity Trust should be increased.

I wonder what made Byerlee think of that? The fact that the rest of his answer focuses on the conservation of genetic resources and the use of carbon financing to avoid deforestation? This the party line on the value of agricultural biodiversity: it is a source of traits for those clever breeders to use. True, but there is so much more that agrobiodiversity could deliver, given half a chance.

As we keep saying.