Before you all start responding to my recent post by pointing me in the direction of the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity paper on the impact of trade liberalization on agricultural biodiversity, let me say that I have read it, and that I stick to my call for more thorough analysis. First, despite its title, the CBD paper concentrates on the presumed effects of liberalization – via changes in land use and production intensification – on biodiversity in general rather than agricultural biodiversity in particular, something that was also discussed by an older IUCN paper. Second, it repeats a few too many times how complicated the issue is. And finally, it provides little in the way of empirical data.
Subsidise this
There is plenty of analysis out there on the topic of agricultural subsidies and their actual or potential effect on things like growth of the farm sector, productivity, rural population levels and employment rates, farmers’ incomes and the number and average size of farms. But I haven’t seen much empirical data – or even theoretical discussion – of what subsidies (or the lack of them) mean for agrobiodiversity on farms. The data and discussion must be out there, it’s just that I don’t know the agricultural economics literature well enough to even know where to look.
So it was kind of interesting that I happened across two pieces of work in the past couple of weeks that shed some – albeit oblique – light on the subject. A 2003 article on The New Farm looks at what happened in New Zealand when agricultural subsidies were phased out: starting in 1984, the kiwis kept “a basic social security framework … funding for agricultural research, … and measures to keep agricultural pests from leaping around the world, and (did) away with the rest.â€Â
The New Zealand experience strongly suggests that most supposed objectives of agricultural subsidies and market protections – to maintain a traditional countryside, protect the environment, ensure food security, combat food scarcity, support family farms and slow corporate take-over of agriculture – are better achieved by their absence.
The paper suggests that the end of subsidies forced farmers to diversify, embrace organic methods, let marginal land revert to bush and innovate furiously, including by adopting new varieties. It’s hard to be entirely sure from the information presented, but on balance it would seem that (agricultural) biodiversity was better conserved and better used after subsidies ended.
I also came across a newly-released FAO paper entitled “Long Term Farming Trends. An Inquiry Using Agricultural Censuses,†a meta-analysis of 43 agricultural censuses across 17 countries. The authors look at differences among countries, and changes in the last 30 years or so, in things like land inequality and farm size, but also crop diversification, by which they basically mean the extent to which non-staple crops are being grown. They found, for example, that small farms tend to concentrate on staple crops more than bigger farms do, and that agricultural openness (i.e. lack of subsidies) “is correlated with diversification away from staple crops.†Though this relationship did not hold for countries with high population levels, the result concords with what happened in New Zealand.
You see what I mean when I said that the light being shed is at best oblique. Neither paper discusses diversity within crops much (or at all!), and their concept of “diversification†was somewhat crude. That wasn’t really their aim, so you can’t blame the authors. But with WTO members discussing the freeing up of agricultural markets (when they manage to discuss anything at all), I do wonder whether agricultural economists are devoting enough (or any) thinking to the possible effects on agricultural biodiversity. I look forward to being reassured by someone out there.
Wild rice protected
I find this somewhat odd. Minnesota in the United States has apparently enacted special legislation to protect the DNA of its “state grain” wild rice. ((Not a true rice of course, but you knew that.)) The law requires the state apparatus to keep a close eye on genetic modification of wild rice, not only in Minnesota but throughout the US, and to notify interested parties if permits for GM rice are issued anywhere. Why? Minnesotans, please enlighten us.
People power
Here’s another potpourri, this one centred on local people’s perceptions of agricultural biodiversity. From the journal Livestock Science comes a paper looking at how traditional livestock keepers in Uganda select breeding bulls and cows among Ankole longhorn cattle. Another paper, this one from Crop Protection, discusses how Ethiopian farmers rank sorghum varieties with regard to their resistance to storage pests, and indeed what they do about such pests. And finally, from The Hindu newspaper, news of an initiative, to be launched on the International Day for Biological Diversity by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, for a “people’s movement” to “prepare a database of all living organisms and traditional knowledge systems” in Kerala. The initiative is part of the state’s draft biodiversity strategy and action plan, which apparently includes consideration of agricultural biodiversity.
Happy International Day for Biodiversity
Yup, it’s the day we wait for each year. The day that the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has set aside to celebrate. And this year, it’s all about Biodiversity and Climate Change. Yay! We learn that an increase of only 2.5 degrees C will mean “50 million more people facing hunger” and that “conserving certain species such as mangroves and drought resistant crops can reduce the disastrous impacts of climate change effects such as flooding and famine”.
If you were looking for more on biodiversity and agriculture, look no further. Our friend Andy Jarvis, along with colleagues Annie Lane and Robert Hijmans, has published a paper looking at how climate change will affect the survival of crop wild relatives in three species: peanut, cowpea and potato. There’s a press release here (and coverage in Reuters). Bottom line: things don’t look good.
Climate change affects agriculture from at least two directions. It will require diversity as a sources of traits to cope with the effects, by breeding new varieties. And yet it threatens that very diversity with extinction, especially when, like the peanut, you can move your seeds less than a metre each year in search of more suitable growing conditions.
Two solutions present themselves, which is a nice symmetry. Try to ensure that natural conservation efforts in parks and the like are designed with wild relatives in mind, giving slow-coaches like the peanut a helping hand if necessary. And collect more samples of agricultural biodiversity from the wild and from farmers’ fields to store in genebanks. Alas, this latter option has become more and more difficult as countries increasingly fear the rip-off tactics of bio-pirates. And who’s to blame for that? Step forward the CBD.
It’s an ironic world, eh?