Takin’ a break

Bad Santa So we discussed this thing among ourselves, and decided that we would both have a more enjoyable rest if we put this blog to rest too. Temporarily. That way we won’t be fretting about connections and internets and all that technology. Just about over-eating, our solemn duty at this time of year.

In the meantime, you could visit our page of links and try visiting some of them from time to time. So, for a couple of weeks we’re off to our respective non-work homes. We wish you everything you might wish for yourselves, and we’ll see you early in January.

Second “Farmer First”

This totally passed me by. The Institute of Development Studies just hosted a workshop entitled ‘Farmer First Revisited‘ from 12-14 December 2007, “to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the original ‘Farmer First’ event.” That event (and the associated book) was quite a milestone, and the papers presented at this month’s reprise look worthy of their illustrious predecessors presented back in July 1987. The very Web 2.0 conference website includes a timeline and blog.

Getting ready for changing climates

Four papers together give an insight into what global warming promises for agriculture and agriculturalists, and how to deal with it.

ResearchBlogging.orgSome people will tell you that global warming is something we can cope with because it won’t actually create any new climates, just shift the old ones around a bit on the the surface of the Earth. They’re wrong. ((Williams, J. W., Jackson, S. T., & Kutzbach, J. E. (2007). Projected distributions of novel and disappearing climates by 2100 AD. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104(14), 5738-5742.)) John Williams and his colleagues published an article in PNAS in the spring that shows conclusively that even the IPCC’s B1 scenario, in which modest reduction sees CO2 stabilized at 550 parts per million by 2100 AD, creates considerable risk of completely novel climates.

Continue reading “Getting ready for changing climates”

Tangled Bank #95

Doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun? Was it only two weeks ago that the last biological carnival went up? How much longer can I keep this rhetorical ball of nonsense in the air? Tangled Bank 95 is up, hosted at Ouroboros. Go! Expose yourself to some diverse ideas. You’ve already read the three pieces we had the greedy gall to submit.

Dope

The answers are in, over at the World Bank’s discussion of its 2008 report Agriculture for Development. There’s a lot of good sense in the report author’s comments, such as the need for country (and region) specific approaches and the care that needs to be taken over commercialization, subsidies and the private sector. There are also some things one might take issue with. For example:

Vitamin A enhanced rice is an example of propoor technology under development which could save millions of lives. This will entail increasing support to public national and international research for crops grown and consumed largely by the poor, as well as strengthening capacity in biosafety evaluation and regulation.

I confess I am really, really amazed to find official World Bank support for this point of view. It is so much easier to boost vitamin A intake by broadening the diet to include orange fruits and vegetables and dark green leafy vegetables. One has to wonder why the World Bank continues to push this particular example of genetic modification when there are others that would be much more defensible if one really wanted to go down that route.

The response to a question about climate change had this to say:

The most urgent investments are in crop varieties tolerant to drought and heat, and irrigation systems. Also countries need to strengthen responses to increase volnerability through crop insurance schemes and safety nets.

New varieties may be part of the solution, but it may be considerably more effective to give farmers the access to a wider range of genetic variability and the capacity to make their own selections of widely adapted, and adaptable, populations in order to be able to cope with climate change. At least that should be tried. Properly.

I confess I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the pretty vague answer to my own question, about quick wins. But Luigi, who asked whether the Bank undervalues diversity in agricultural systems, will presumably be happy with part of the answer:

International support to the Global Crop Diversity Trust should be increased.

I wonder what made Byerlee think of that? The fact that the rest of his answer focuses on the conservation of genetic resources and the use of carbon financing to avoid deforestation? This the party line on the value of agricultural biodiversity: it is a source of traits for those clever breeders to use. True, but there is so much more that agrobiodiversity could deliver, given half a chance.

As we keep saying.