Posts

Posted on

Ft Collins genebank in the news

There’s an article about USDA’s long-term genebank at Ft Collins, Colorado in the Denver Post:

Global warming is predicted by some seed-physiology scientists to wipe out as much as 40 percent of the world’s crops, according to Kathryn Kennedy, director of the St. Louis-based Center for Plant Conservation, a longtime user of the seed bank.

Plant breeders and researchers will turn here for the seeds to produce the crops adapted to new climatic conditions.

“We have always tried to stay three steps ahead, but with global warming, we’re concerned three steps may not be enough,” said Christine Walters, a plant physiologist and self-described seed nerd at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Center for Genetic Resource Preservation.

Inevitably, Svalbard gets a name-check, though accompanied by a little bit of a sneer :), I thought:

Unlike the new, attention-getting “doomsday” seed bank dug into the permafrost of Svalbard, Norway, to be the ultimate seed backup, seeds go in and out of the Fort Collins site. About 150,000 seed samples were sent out last year.

It’s a long article, but well worth reading. And check out the slide-show too. The only blemish ((And thanks to Karen Williams for pointing it out.)) is that the genebank is referred to as the “CSU gene bank,” CSU being Colorado State University. Well, it’s undoubtedly on the campus of CSU, but the National Center for Genetic Resource Preservation is a federal facility under USDA.

Posted on

Support for beekepers

Sweet news for Kenya’s apiarists: the European Union has advanced Sh13 million to increase the flow, marketing and returns on honey. More than 3000 beekeepers in seven projects across the country stand to benefit. Here’s hoping they don’t import any dodgy sick bees from Australia — current favoured culprits for the cause of colony collapse disorder. I wonder whether fruit and veg harvests might improve too.

Posted on

China losing biodiversity “at a frightening rate”

Land in Beijing, mind at one in the morning, the rest of the world at 7, get to the waiting lounge, discover free wireless, scan internets, discover — hold the front page — that China is losing biodiversity extremely rapidly. A thoughtful piece in the Asia Times uses the demise of the Yangtze River Dolphin to take quite a detailed look at why conservation does not seem to get any traction here. Turf wars between ministries seem to be the prime reason. There’s little talk of agriculture (I know, we sound like a cracked record ((An early form of sound storage prone to defects, for our younger readers)) on this) aside from a very brief mention of ecosystem services. The fact is, China’s agriculture is among the oldest in the world, and the menu must be among the most diverse, but all the indications are that they are no longer growing the diversity they used to and that they are eating much of the animal diversity into extinction.

I’m on my way to Kunming, to see at first hand some exciting projects that make use of agricultural biodiversity to improve livelihoods. If connectivity there is as good and easy as it is here, and if I have the time, I’ll be sure to report here.

Posted on

Green Millennium Revolution Villages debated

I’ve blogged a few times before about the Millennium Villages. An initiative of the Earth Institute at Columbia University launched in 2004, the Millennium Villages project aims “to demonstrate how the eight Millennium Development Goals can be met in rural Africa within five years through community-led development.” ((“The Millennium Village effort is explicitly linked to achieving the Millennium Development Goals and addresses an integrated and scaled-up set of interventions covering food production, nutrition, education, health services, roads, energy, communications, water, sanitation, enterprise diversification and environmental management. This has never been done before.”))

Pedro Sanchez, director of the Millennium Villages Project, The Earth Institute at Columbia University debated the project, and also Africa’s proposed new Green Revolution (another frequent subject hereabouts), with the anthropologist Paul Richards of Wageningen University yesterday at the Development Studies Association Annual Conference. That’s going on at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the UK.

Would have been great to be there, and ask why it is that supporting the Millennium Villagers manage and enhance their agrobiodiversity doesn’t seem to be much on the agenda. But here’s the next best thing: a description of the encounter, one of a series of entries on the conference you’ll find at The Crossing, the blog of the STEPS Centre. ((“The Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability (STEPS) Centre is a major new interdisciplinary global research and policy engagement hub combining development with science and technology studies. The STEPS Centre addresses two global challenges: linking environmental sustainability with better livelihoods and health; and making science and technology work to reduce poverty and increase social justice.”))

Here’s an intriguing snippet from the blog:

Richards says the Green Revolution induces spread of innovation by showing the seed system the “correct” pattern. But an alternative can be based on unsupervised learning that already takes place, he adds, whizzing through some very big and interesting ideas very quickly.

Kinda makes you wish you’d been there in person, doesn’t it?