Category: Policy

Posted on

China outbreeds India

A leader in The Hindu asks: “How did China manage to outstrip India in agriculture when the two countries were more or less on a par on most parameters 25 years ago?” It then goes on to list the reasons given by Prof. Huang Jikun, Director of the Centre for Chinese Agricultural Policy, for China’s superior agricultural performance

technological improvements accruing from research and development, investment in rural infrastructure and an increasingly liberalised agricultural policy.

That sounds plausible. But perhaps the most interesting comments were that

the Chinese authorities received and assessed as many as 2,046 applications for the registration of new plant varieties in the five years between 1999 and 2004

while

the number of field crop varieties released by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) actually fell by 50 per cent between 1997 and 2001, despite the fact that there was a sharp and sustained increase in funding for the organisation.

Well, the two statements are not really comparing like with like, but the implied equation of plant breeding output with the overall performance of the agricultural sector is intriguing. I wonder if there’s a worldwide dataset that could be used to test the connection.

Anyway, talking of Indian breeding, there’s an interview in India’s The Statesman with Tamil Nadu Agricultural University vice-chancellor C. Ramasamyan on the effort to improve — and thus revive — traditional rice landraces in that state.

Posted on

Native potato marketing wins prize

It never rains but it pours. Peter Ballantyne from AgInfo News has sent us information on another attempt to forge “intelligent markets” linking small rural producers with urban consumers. T’ikapapa, “which packs and markets specially selected Peruvian native potatoes,” has just won a SEED Award. It is part of the Papa Andina Project coordinated by CIP and funded by Swiss Development Cooperation. The SEED initiative is Supporting Entrepreneurs for Environment and Development.

Posted on

Promotion of new crops and its effects

Following on from yesterday’s post, which looked at the UNEP-WCMC report on the ecosystem services provided by biodiversity, including agricultural biodiversity, I wanted today to signal the publication by the International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) of a new position paper which is somewhat related, and of which I am a one of the authors. ((Dawson, I.K., Guarino, L. and Jaenicke, H. (2007) Underutilised Plant Species: Impacts of Promotion on Biodiversity. Position Paper No. 2. International Centre for Underutilised Crops, Colombo, Sri Lanka.)) This looks at the impact of promoting underutilised plant species (UPS) on overall levels of biodiversity in farming systems.

ICUC’s position on biodiversity is that its promotion should not be viewed as an “end in itself.” Rather, diversity needs to be “conserved through use,” or the livelihood opportunities it presents and the other services that it provides to the poor, both primary producers and local product processors, now and for the future. The significant nutritional and other health benefits received by consumers further afield in, e.g., urban areas and in other countries, through being able to access a more diverse range of foods, medicines and other products, should, however, also not be neglected.

Clearly, there are significant benefits that can accrue to poor families and communities, as well as others, through the promotion of one or more UPS — better nutrition, health, income etc. However, such promotion can result in the erosion of diversity in other crops, and in the agricultural landscape as a whole. If that happens, any benefits which UPS promotion delivers in the short term could be outweighed by long-term negative effects on the provision of the sorts of ecosystem services the WCMC paper discussed. ((We also discuss in our paper the complexity of the linkages between diversity, productivity and stability.))

In the ICUC paper, we look at the possible methods that can be used to promote UPS and suggest a number of conditions that should be met if such interventions are not to have undesired effects on biodiversity and the services it provides:

  • Possible consequences of promotion for agricultural and natural biodiversity should be described in advance, in order to assess potential livelihood and conservation risks.
  • Specific incentives that support diversification should be included when promotion of a UPS carries significant risks for biodiversity.
  • Particular actions that are known to support biodiversity should be used during promotion, e.g. improving germplasm access and supporting “intelligent markets” for products.
  • The consequences of promotion activities for biodiversity, and the linked impacts on livelihoods, should be monitored.

“Intelligent markets” are ones that improve both incomes and environmental management. Developing such markets “will involve educating producers and microprocessors in how to diversify their activities, encouraging value chain development, and supporting DO [denomination of origin] and related initiatives.” I particularly wanted to highlight this point because, coincidentally, FAO has just published a report on “Approaches to linking producers to markets” which looks at how best to help farmers organize themselves to supply identified markets. ((Andrew W. Shepherd (2007) Approaches to linking producers to markets: A review of experiences to date. Agricultural Management, Marketing and Finance Occasional Paper 13. FAO, Rome.))

We’ve had a few examples of this on the blog lately, haven’t we? They have ranged from the Ojibwa and their wild rice to the “under the sun” cheeses of Italy just in the past few days. Is it a zeitgeist thing?