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Cacao and conservation

A whole issue of the journal Biodiversity and Conservation looks at how cocoa production landscapes can contribute to biodiversity conservation. There are several papers on specific case studies and also an overview. Most of the discussion is — predictably — about what cacao cultivation can do for biodiversity, but, what about the other way around? The overview does suggest that

it is important to understand trade-offs between productivity and conservation and the economic costs of conservation friendly practices to land users so that more effective policies can be designed… Quantifying the benefits (both short and long-term) of biodiversity within agroforestry landscapes to farm productivity, for example via pest and disease control … requires attention.

What are these biodiversity-friendly practices? Here’s a few ideas, again from the overview:

  • eco-friendly certification
  • research and extension to increase productivity while maintaining diverse tree canopies
  • development of markets for non-cocoa products
  • payment for environmental services

As far as certification is concerned, the Fair Tracing Project may suggest solutions:

The Fair Tracing project believes that attaching tracing technology to Fair Trade products sourced in developing countries will enhance the value of such goods to consumers in the developed world seeking to make ethical purchasing choices.

I’ve just come across this project, and I don’t know much about it. A piece on its web site — basically a blog — about the ICT being used to trace fair trade coffee in Haiti did point me to a rather interesting example of a corporation trying to bridge the digital divide.

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Breadfruit overlooked

USAToday has done a nice write-up of the National Tropical Botanical Gardens in Hawaii, but, unaccountably, this does not even mention the work of the Breadfruit Institute, which is a department of the NTBG. I blogged about the Institute and Diane Ragone’s pioneering efforts in breadfruit conservation not too long ago. They really should get more exposure. But so should other NTBG work on cultivated plants, such as the restoration of the taro terraces at Limahuli, which are now used to grow various varieties of a number of traditional Hawaiian crops. There’s a photo of the terraces in the USAToday piece, but the text is entirely about wild plants. Important stuff, but why leave out the amazing work going on in agricultural biodiversity?

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New approaches to crop rotation

Many intensive farmers — and most gardeners — use diversity in time to improve their harvests. They change the crop growing on a particular piece of land from year to year. Legumes add nitrogen to the soil, which the following crop, perhaps a cereal, uses up. That’s the simplest rotation, and soybean-maize covers vast swathes of land. But with the increasing unpredictability of conditions, more complex systems may be more beneficial. Indeed, recent research suggests that a dynamic rotation, which draws on a larger selection of crop diversity and which changes the exact pattern of rotation depending on recent past events, may be the best option yet.

A symposium in 2005 heard reports from USDA scientists who had conducted experiments in dynamic cropping; that symposium has now been published in Agronomy Journal. Access is restricted, so I’m glad that Biopact has quite a detailed analysis, even though I cannot discover from its web site who is behind Biopact.

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The benefits of sharing

A post in Google Earth Blog alerted me to the great efforts by staff and students at the Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile to geo-tag the specimens in their herbarium. They’ve produced a Google Earth kml file to show hundreds of collecting locations throughout the country. Below are the localities of Persea lingue, a congener of the avocado, though I’m not sure how closely related they are. It’s threatened, according to IUCN, and indeed there’s only a couple of specimens in the herbarium, quite near each other:

persea-lingue-herb.jpg

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Preserving rare breeds at the grassroots level

Because there is only modest interest by most national governments in the preservation of rare farm animal breeds, much of this work is done by non-governmental organizations. ((Contributed by Michael Kubisch.)) These are often operated on shoestring budgets and frequently require some pretty imaginative financial acrobatics to exist. Below is a list of some of these organizations. I realize it is likely to be incomplete — lists like this always are — but I hope it’s at least a fair representation of the types of organizations that are involved in this effort. Some are simply umbrella organizations of breeders of specific breeds, while others have actual facilities that produce animals. Some focus on one breed, while others have a barnyard full of different critters.

I can personally attest to the effectiveness of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, having been a member a while back, but I don’t really want to provide any specific endorsements here. If you think rare breed preservation is a worthwhile endeavor (and who wouldn’t), check out these websites, and  if you find an organization that appeals to you, join and support it. If, on the other hand, I have omitted your favorite organization, just post a comment with a link and I will publish a more complete list in the future.

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