Policy

November 23, 2021November 23, 2021

Full access to the full Access to Seeds Index

We’ve blogged about it before, but the 2021 Access to Seeds Index is now fully out, following the 2019 and 2016 indexes. ¹

On September 21, alongside the UN Food systems summit, we launched the first regional results of 32 companies in Western and Central Africa. Then, on October 15, we launched the results of 32 companies in Eastern and Southern Africa, which coincided with the 2021 World Food Day celebration. Finally, on November 22, we launched the results of 31 companies in South and South-East Asia at the Asia Pacific Seed Association’s technical session.

Remember why this is important.

Smallholder farmers are the main food producers in lower-income countries, and their access to good quality seeds of improved varieties is essential for ensuring that people in these regions have sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. Ultimately, the index evaluates seed companies’ contributions to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2: Zero Hunger. Seed companies play a key role in ensuring this access.

The main take-aways?

Presence: Seed companies are active in almost all index countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and South and South-East Asia but can extend their reach to remote areas.

Crop diversification: Many companies are providing more diverse portfolios for vegetables and field crops but need to offer more pulses to help tackle malnutrition

Extension services: Companies are offering extension services in more countries than in 2019 and leveraged ICT tools to reach smallholder farmers as an impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on traditional field training.

Local seed sector development: Companies are still only concentrating their investments in developing local seed sectors such as seed production, breeding programs and processing in a few countries. This approach leaves behind many smallholders in many countries who can benefit from a developed local seed sector. Therefore, it’s crucial for the seed industry to collaborate with research institutes, investors, civil society, and governments in industry growth in more countries to strengthen capabilities and means to reach more farmers in all regions.

Lots of data to dig into. And comments always welcome.

November 22, 2021November 22, 2021

Brainfood: Transeurasian languages, Japanese rice, Grapevine pip shapes, Citrus evolution & domestication, Yak domestication, Brassica domestication, Coffee diversity, Switchgrass diversity, Onion landrace, Seed systems

Triangulation supports agricultural spread of the Transeurasian languages. People speaking the precursor of Japonic, Koreanic, Tungusic, Mongolic and Turkic languages started out around the West Liao River and then spread with their Panicum millet farming, mixing with other populations and picking up rice and wheat along the way.
Artificial selection in the expansion of rice cultivation. They managed to get to Hokkaido with that rice because of a couple of genes. Rice genes, that is.
Pip shape echoes grapevine domestication history. If they had carried grapevines, we’d be able to say which varieties.
Shaping the biology of citrus: I. Genomic determinants of evolution. They maybe had a role in citrus domestication, but a lot of the hard work was done by the prior adaptive radiation of the group. The citrus group, that is. Quick summary of both papers here if you can get access to it.
Yak Domestication: A Review of Linguistic, Archaeological, and Genetic Evidence. They weren’t involved in yak domestication, though, I don’t think.
The Evolutionary History of Wild, Domesticated, and Feral Brassica oleracea (Brassicaceae). Nor that of Brassica oleracea, whose closest wild relative turns out to be half a world away on Crete.
Coffee: Genetic Diversity, Erosion, Conservation, and Utilization. Ok, stay with me here. Brassica oleracea is related to Brassica carinata, which originated in Ethiopia, which is also where arabica coffee comes from.
Surveying Grassland Islands: the genetics and performance of Appalachian switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) collections. If you can find a close connection between coffee and switchgrass you get a prize. Ah no wait, there are 2 ploidy levels, just like in Coffea. Yeah, I know it’s tenuous.
Agrobiodiversity-Oriented Food Systems between Public Policies and Private Action: A Socio-Ecological Model for Sustainable Territorial Development. These guys really know their onions. And think they can use their conservation as a spur to local development. In Italy, but who’s to say it couldn’t work in Ethiopia as well.
Putting diverse farming households’ preferences and needs at the centre of seed system development. Imagine.

November 15, 2021November 15, 2021

Agrobiodiversity manifestly important

The process leading up to the just-started 2nd International Agrobiodiversity Congress included coming up with the “Rome Manifesto: Using Agrobiodiversity to Transform Food Systems.” This highlights three “commitments to help tackle global challenges including climate change, malnutrition, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.”

Consume diverse foods in diets that are nutritious, sustainable, affordable, acceptable, safe, and accessible to all.
Produce food in diverse, resilient, and sustainable food systems.
Conserve agrobiodiversity to give people the options they need to sustainably and inclusively transform food systems and improve lives, both now and in the future.

Yeah but how, you ask? You’ll have to attend the congress to find out, I guess, or at least follow on Twitter…

November 12, 2021November 11, 2021

Confused about woke agricultural movements?

Not to worry, TABLE is here with a handy cheat sheet.

Now you can tell your agroecology from your regenerative agriculture from your organic agriculture.

I have two questions though. Why not also have “conventional” agriculture in there? And, is it really that important to know these differences?

November 11, 2021November 11, 2021

Giving diversity a chance (reprise)

Taking the opportunity to cross-post this from Landscape News. Because, well, I can.

We at the Global Crop Diversity Trust work to make sure that food has a future. So imagine our excitement when we found that a recent edition of The Economist included a Technology Quarterly – and indeed an accompanying leader – on… the future of food.

The excitement didn’t last long, alas.

It turned out that the 2 October round-up dealt exclusively with new, experimental technologies like vertical farms and Impossible Burgers. To be fair, it did define the holy grail – or grails – of food system transformation in an interesting, and potentially useful, way: “…the quartet of healthy not harmful, natural not artificial, pure not processed, environmentally friendly not pernicious…” We could quibble about the meaning of “natural” and “pure” when it comes to something as fundamentally manufactured as food, but let that go for now. We think we know what the writer meant.

And the piece was certainly up-front and transparent about the choice of focusing on sexy, cutting-edge tech: “This report will survey an array of technologies being touted as ways of transforming the world’s food-production system not by doing old forms of agriculture in a less cruel and more sustainable way, but by doing things that have never been done before.”

It all does, however, raise an obvious question. What would be so wrong with looking into technologies that allow old forms of agriculture to be done in less cruel and more sustainable ways? Wouldn’t they likely be cheaper and more effective than, well, vertical farms and Impossible Burgers?

In particular, wouldn’t biodiverse farms in biodiverse landscapes tick all the boxes of healthy, natural, pure and environmentally-friendly? And be more interesting, and produce tastier food, to boot? The Economist itself seems to think so, if its review of Dan Saladino’s wonderful book, Eating to Extinction, is anything to go by.

We certainly think so. The Crop Trust’s mission is to help ensure the future of food by safeguarding the diversity of crops. That may sound a little New Age. And we do think that hugging trees can be a pretty good idea, though we should hug trees of as many different apple varieties as possible, and of the wild relatives of the apple too.

But we’re not Luddites. There are important technologies that could and should be developed and deployed in the pursuit of an agriculture, and indeed a food system, rooted in biodiversity. Using DNA markers to speed up crop breeding, better information systems, describing seeds and plants with drones and robots, and cryopreserving varieties in genebanks: these can all make important contributions to agricultural sustainability. And they are, in their own way, just as sexy as aquaponics and lab-grown meat. We’d love to talk to The Economist about them. Call us.

In the language that The Economist is perhaps most familiar with, when it comes to agriculture we should think less about economies of scale and more about economies of scope. Scale has fed us, but it has also got us into this mess. We think it’s time to give diversity a chance.