- The Australian paradox: A substantial decline in sugars intake over the same timeframe that overweight and obesity have increased. Wait … there’s an Australian paradox too?
- Phytophthora blight of Pigeonpea [Cajanus cajan (L.) Millsp.]: An updating review of biology, pathogenicity and disease management. The wild relatives are sources of resistance, but that won’t be enough.
- Effects of crop mixtures on chocolate spot development on faba bean grown in mediterranean climates. Intercropping with cereals reduces the disease.
- Combining high biodiversity with high yields in tropical agroforests. It can be done, for smallholder cacao in Indonesia.
- And elsewhere … Cost benefit and livelihood impacts of agroforestry in Bangladesh. An entire book.
- Resource concentration dilutes a key pest in indigenous potato agriculture. Monocropping can be sustainable. Via.
- Community versus single-species distribution models for British plants. Overall, better stick with the single species kind, but it was worth a try.
- Quantitative trait loci for salinity tolerance in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.). They exist, and there are markers.
- Climate, competition and connectivity affect future migration and ranges of European trees. Well, doh.
- Quantifying carbon storage for tea plantations in China. All the tea in China…sequesters a lot of C. But plant type doesn’t count for much.
The latest on the Haitian seed donation controversy
You may remember a number of posts we did last year on the Monsanto donation of maize and vegetable seed to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake, and what Catholic Relief Services and others thought about it, which was, in a nutshell, not much. Now, via Truthout, comes news of an investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch of what happened to the seed. The article also usefully recounts the whole story. And there’s a summary, with added video goodness. These three points from the summary probably best describe where Haiti Grassroots Watch are coming from:
At least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting “hooked” on hybrid seeds. (Most Haitian farmers select seeds from their own harvests.) One of the USAID/WINNER trained extension agents told Haiti Grassroots Watch that in his region, farmers won’t need to save seeds anymore: “They don’t have to kill themselves like before. They can plant, harvest, sell or eat. They don’t have to save seeds anymore because they know they will get seeds from the [WINNER-subsidized] store.” When it was pointed out that WINNER’s subsidies end when the project ends (in four years), he had no logical response. At least some of the farmer groups interviewed also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids. In at least one location, it is quite possible farmers plant seed without the use of recommended gloves, masks and other protections, and – until Haiti Grassroots Watch intervened – they were planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed. In at least several places around the country, donated seeds produced no or little yield. “What I would like to tell the NGOs it that, just because we are the poorest country doesn’t mean they should give us whatever, whenever,” disgruntled Bainet farmer Jean Robert Cadichon told Haiti Grassroots Watch.
But, as a pithy encapsulation of the Haitian seed donation conundrum, I liked this comment from an interviewee:
“We love Monsanto seeds,” Farmer said again. Although he noted that the bigger kernels don’t always fit in farmers’ corn mills.
Farmers! Always wanting more.
Sending the future up in smoke
Here, as our informant put it, is “today’s chapter in a seemingly never-ending story”.
The state legislature of North Carolina in the United States is minded to cut all funding to the North Carolina Tobacco Trust Fund. That’s short-sighted and a great shame.
Tobacco, unlike, say, opium poppy, is not an easy crop, to grow or to defend. Wendell Berry, although he doesn’t himself grow it, is surrounded by people, including family, who do and he has worked for many of them. Berry has written elegiacally about tobacco, and the essential dilemma it presents, now that demand has fallen. I can’t find my copy of that essay right now (or on the web) but the gist of it was that a high-value crop like tobacco spared the environment because by dint of skill and hard work a family could make a decent living from a relatively small patch of land for the tobacco and the food they needed.
North Carolina’s Tobacco Trust Fund was established with the state’s share of money that the tobacco companies paid in settlement of lawsuits, and is intended to protect farms and smooth the transition from tobacco to new crops, new farming systems, and new approaches to local sales. In other words, to promote diversification. By all accounts, it has worked. One advocate for, and beneficiary of, the Fund put forward these numbers:
In the past three years alone, RAFI’s Tobacco Community Reinvestment Fund has brought over $733 million into communities throughout the state and created or preserved more than 4,100 jobs. All these benefits come from a relatively modest investment: $3.6 million of Tobacco Trust Fund money distributed to 367 innovative farmers in awards of less than $10,000 per individual or $30,000 per community project. Each dollar invested has led to $205 circulating in our state’s economy, an incredible return on investment with direct benefits to our tax base.
Why North Carolina is planning to cut the Fund is not at all clear to me. This certainly isn’t a case like that of the genebanks at Pavlovsk, or Wellesbourne, or Jharkand, where land is deemed more valuable for other purposes. But it shares the same basic underlying premise; that the future can take care of itself. Where agriculture is concerned, with its dependence on living resources and human ingenuity and knowledge, that is often simply wrong. There’s money to be saved (or made) now, but only because those who make and save it now will not have to pay out in future for what they destroy now.
Not every piddling genebank or subsidy scheme deserves to remain untouched, but it doesn’t take a genius or a seer to realize that the costs down the line often far outweigh the benefits here and now. We don’t really know how to measure those costs properly, but that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that the rules of the game require that we do, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to change the rules.
Nibbles: Phosphorus, Options, Success, Extension
- Another view of peak phosphorus: there isn’t one.
- Worldwatch Institute offers “15 solutions to … a healthier environment and a more food-secure future”. h/t ILRI.
- From sorghum to maize, not your usual “top lady farmer“.
- Plant clinics thriving in Sierra Leone. Do the plant doctors ever prescribe agricultural biodiversity?
Brainfood: Biotechnology, Pollinators, Mulberries, Rice blast, Locavores, Roselle, Cassava, Protected areas, Traditional vegetables, Vitis, European diversity
- Agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement in a variable climate: hope or hype? Your guess is as good as mine.
- Pollinator insects benefit from rotational fallows. They do indeed.
- Biological and productive characteristics of silkworm mulberry varieties of different ploidy and their use for raising silkworms in different seasons. Amazing; more silk faster from polyploid mulberries.
- Mapping quantitative trait loci conferring blast resistance in upland indica rice (Oryza sativa L.). They’re there.
- Food relocalization for environmental sustainability in Cumbria. Fair enough, but what, actually, are the locavores going to eat?
- Relationships among twelve genotypes of roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa L.) cultivated in western Mexico. Twelve genotypes split into two groups, could be important for breeding and production.
- Variation in qualitative and quantitative traits of cassava germplasm from selected national breeding programmes in sub-Saharan Africa. There is some, but not for everything.
- Global protected area impacts. There are some, but not everywhere.
- Diversity, geographical, and consumption patterns of traditional vegetables in sociolinguistic communities in Benin: Implications for domestication and utilization. 245 species, only 19% cultivated, with big differences among ethnic groups and geographical areas. Research and promotion needs identified.
- Observed trends in winegrape maturity in Australia. 1.7 days earlier per year for 1993–2009, 0.8 days earlier per year for 1985–2009.
- Still a lot of diversity out there, Europe edition: common bean in Sicily, melons near Madrid.