Practical policy research opportunity

Good news, everyone. There’s money available from a programme called BiodivERsA ((No comments, please, on the beauty, or otherwise, of that particular name.)) You have to come up with a proposal for an international research project to:

  • link scientific advancement to challenges in biodiversity policy and conservation management;
  • generate new knowledge and insights with the eventual goal of use in policy and management;
  • generate added value to national research projects across Europe by linking expertise and efforts across national teams.

Furthermore, it should have to do with biodiversity, and should link scientific advance to policy and practice. And it should include partners from other ERA-net countries. The online pre-proposal form will be available from next Monday, 10 December.

So you could, for example, decide to study the impact of european legislation on levels of agricultural biodiversity and then propose policy solutions that would increase the diversity farmers and others can easily make use of. But they’ll never fund you.

I wonder what they will fund.

Hat tip: Ecology and Policy.

Selling the idea of sorghum in southern Zambia

it is fair to say that most farmers in the Southern Province are extremely dissatisfied with growing maize. It fails to meet expectations, year after year, as erractic rainfall and localized droughts reduce yields. But maize is the only marketable crop for farmers (the government is the buyer), so they keep growing it even though payment times can be incredibly drawn out (some farmers have yet to be paid almost 6 months after harvest!) It’s a catch 22 that keeps rural households food insecure and low on cash. Sorghum, with its drought tolerance and available market can address these dissatisfactions.

This from a long and fascinating post — one of those first-hand field reports I find so interesting — from a worker with CARE in Zambia. Thulasy B. has some intriguing insights into the whole business of agricultural development, things that I have no experience of. She also has a blogroll that might be a goldmine for people interested in this area.

Ethiopia and the ITPGRFA

Ethiopia’s Institute of Biodiversity Conservation (IBC) has a nice new website. Interestingly, it includes an interactive feature called BioForum. I was surprised, however, to see no reference to the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA) in the section on access. Since Ethiopia has been a Party to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture since 2003, IBC should be using the SMTA for transfers of Annex 1 material, surely.

A genebank opens

Tunisia just got a new genebank. Which is fine. But it will come as a surprise to many to see it described as “the first African as well Arab Gene’s Bank.” It is certainly not the first genebank in Africa, nor the first in the Arab world. It isn’t even the first one in Arab Africa. I don’t think it’s the first one in Tunisia, in fact. FAO has information on about 1,400 genebanks around the world. It would be very difficult, I think, for a new genebank to be the first one anywhere. Ok, maybe Antartctica. Although actually I heard today in the SIRGEALC corridors that Argentina keeps a safety duplicate of its material on its territory there. I really need to verify that. The Arctic, of course, is taken. Or it will be on 24 February 2008 when the Svalbard Global Seed Vault opens. Fourteen hundred genebanks. My question is: with the International Treaty on PGRFA and its Multilateral System of facilitated access and benefit sharing now in force, at least for some crops, how many genebanks do we really, truly need?

More on EU Conservation Varieties

I didn’t realize it at the time, but that meeting in Vicenza was part of an EU-funded project called Farm Seed Opportunities. So the EU funds a project to explore ways of overcoming the strict rules for the marketing of seeds — which the EU sets. This isn’t the only example of a lack of joined up thinking; there are the subsidies to the tobacco farmers ranged against the budget for no-smoking campaigns, and probably others too. But I digress.

The Directive on Conservation Varieties is currently in its 11th draft, and is due to be discussed again by the EU today, 9 November, as Item 5 on the agenda of the Standing Committee on Seeds and Propagating Material for Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry, an element of the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate General. I think one intention of the Vicenza meeting was to sound out Italian players with a view to making their views known in today’s discussions.

So what are those views? I’m afraid I don’t know. There seems to be a general desire to see farmers and others allowed to market seeds of varieties, balanced by a worry that any legislation may offer big seed companies a low-cost route to marketing their varieties. Some say the maximum amounts of seed prescribed in the draft are too low, which seems to play into the hands of the big seed companies. Is the answer a tighter definition of “conservation” and “amateur” varieties, one that big players would not be able to meet? Or is the answer to reduce quantities still further, so that there is no incentive for the big players to exploit these directives?

Noble farmers experimenting with and exchanging their cultural and agricultural inheritance form a crucial part of the narrative surrounding many objections to Europe’s existing seed laws. If that’s true, then small quantities should be no obstacle. Indeed, they should promote the kind of experimentation and adaptation that lie at the heart of farmer conservation, as they bulk up the seed to make commercial use worthwhile.

Another aspect of the argument around these ideas is that somehow there is a clear and present need to regulate the market for all kinds of seed. Why? I believe that ordinary consumer-protection laws are definitely sufficient as far as seed quality (germination, health) are concerned, and that they could probably cope with questions of identity as well. And for small quantities, where the downside — for incomes and food production alike — is more or less trivial, that ought to be enough.

I’ll be interesting to see how today’s discussions go; in the meantime, civil disobedience seems to be the only alternative.

While we’re on the subject, BBC Radio 4 is airing a two part series called Save our Seeds with the estimable Jonathon Porritt doing his thing. The first programme, on Wednesday 7 November, “explores the ancient origins of our agricultural biodiversity and how scientists are working to gather and secure as many plant varieties as possible.” Part 2, on Wednesday 14 November, “examines the controversial fallout of the Green Revolution and the inherent danger of single variety crops.” Ho hum.