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Active ingredients: who needs ’em?

A comment from Karl of Inoculated Mind, on the great Organic Tomato Debate, gives me an opportunity to sound off again on something I feel quite strongly about. That’s because, although a superficial reading of his comments and mine might suggest we disagree, at base, we don’t. Karl’s bottom line reads:

Bottom line: just eat your veggies!

And with that I totally and wholeheartedly agree.

At issue is the nutritional value of organic versus conventional tomatoes and, by extension, other veggies. The thing is, that comes after a discussion in which I say that more than flavonoids is likely to differ between organic and conventional. Karl points out that some compounds that plants produce in response to attack might be harmful, rather than beneficial, to humans. I moan on about the importance of dose.

Karl comes back with a link to a study of a genetically modified carrot that shows that “if you eat a serving of the modified carrot, you’d absorb 41 percent more calcium than from a regular carrot.” But the same report says that the daily requirement for calcium is 1000 milligrams, and that a 100 gram serving of the modified carrots offers only 60 milligrams, of which only about 24 milligrams is actually absorbed.

In other words, you could not possibly eat enough of the carrots to get your calcium without suffering beta-carotene poisoning, which just goes to reinforce my point about dose being important. ((I am certain I remember the case of a bloke in England who actually killed himself with excess carrot juice, but I cannot find it on the tubes: too much botulism and other nonsense clouding the results.))

The bigger point is that there is an obsession with active ingredients. Increasing the amount of this, that or the other is held to produce this, that or the other beneficial effect. And yes, maybe it does. And maybe it doesn’t, and maybe you can go too far. But people don’t eat active ingredients, unless they are rather far gone already. They eat food, and meals. And the interactions among foods and within meals mean that as far as the details of nutrition, especially micronutrition, go, all bets are off.

A far, far simpler way to boost nutrition and health is simply to eat different things, and lots of them, and forget about active ingredients, and high-lutein tomatoes, and super-calcium carrots, and golden rice, and flax oil, and all the other things that are touted because they contain more of some good thing.

Just eat your veggies. And your meat and fish. And your dairy. And your fruits and nuts. And everything else. Dietary diversity is the answer. ((And lest I am accused of ignoring poor people who cannot afford to buy anything, let alone organic tomatoes, it is probably more important to them than to the rest of the world that they maintain and expand the diversity of things they eat. But that’s another story for another time.))

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Party Poopers: GRAIN on Svalbard

However, this “ultimate safety net” for the biodiversity that world farming depends on is sadly just the latest move in a wider strategy to make ex situ (off site) storage in seed banks the dominant — indeed, only — approach to crop diversity conservation. It gives a false sense of security in a world where the crop diversity present in the farmers’ fields continues to be eroded and destroyed at an ever-increasing rate and contributes to the access problems that plague the international ex situ system.

Now tell me, honestly, how on Earth could anyone have seen that coming. From GRAIN, of all people.

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SBSTTA [decides]

SBSTTA’s recommendations on the review of the CBD’s programme of work on agrobiodiversity are out, after last week’s smackdown. As usual, there are analyses at UKabc and IISD. The general consensus seems to be that the recommendations have been weakened, but I talked to one person familiar with the negotiations who thought the text was actually clearer and more focused now. But a lot of square brackets remain, in particular the whole section on biofuels. One thing that struck me is the invitation by SBSTTA “to evaluate and characterize germplasm potentially suitable for adaptation to climate change.” I didn’t find that in the original document, so I am assuming it was added during the negotiations. It seems unusual for a CBD document in recognizing — albeit implicitly — the importance of ex situ conservation, at least in the context of climate change. But I don’t really know how these things work. I hope someone will explain it to me.

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Of spears, shields and sorghum

Africa’s farmers have been making sorghum beer for centuries, but it now looks like European brewers are getting in on the act. Heineken and Diageo have started replacing imported barley with locally-grown sorghum in their brewing operations in Ghana and Sierra Leone. It started as a social responsibility project (funded by the Common Fund for Commodities, with the European Co-operative for Rural Development as a partner), but recent increases in the price of malting barley have made it “commercially rather attractive” too.

Of course, farmers have to grow the right variety, and ensure that a consistent supply gets to the breweries, so the project has provided training, access to finance (for seed, fertilizer etc.), and assistance with organizing into groups. This is meant to lead to the establishment of a “sustainable production chain,” which is often touted as a prerequisite for the successful promotion of an underutilized crop — or a crop underutilized for a particular purpose, such as sorghum for industrial brewing: “Farmers need to build confidence that the market is there.”

What will the promotion of a single, industrial use for sorghum do to the diversity of the crop? Nothing good, probably, unless the possible consequences are recognized and appropriate steps taken. In a recent paper we have advocated a “spear and shield” approach to promotion. This means that specific incentives that support diversification should be included when promotion of a particular species, variety or use carries significant risks for (agricultural) biodiversity.

Actions which would support diversification include strengthening community germplasm exchange networks. Coincidentally, there’s an IFPRI discussion paper also out today which looks at the seed system for sorghum and millet in West Africa — Mali, in this case. It seems little certified seed is reaching farmers, though it is still unclear whether this is a demand or supply problem. One of the recommendations is that the formal seed supply systems should deal not only with improved material but also with local landraces. This should be brought to the attention of Heineken, Diageo and their sorghum-brewing partners. Their project should seek to strengthen the local seed system as a whole (the shield), not just help farmers get hold of the preferred brewing variety (the spear).