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Uncultivated biodiversity

A few of us have been known to anguish over the term neglected and underutilized species, for a couple of reasons. First off, why use underutilized when underused will do? More importantly, though, it invites a couple of questions. Neglected by whom? Underused by whom? Neglected by science and research, usually, and underused by people who could make more use of them. But still, it’s an unsatisfactory phrase, because as soon as researchers have become interested and people have started making more use of it, the species in question is neither neglected nor underused. “Orphan crops” is lame. Nothing else quite captures it. All of which is somewhat by the by.

Except that I’ve just come across the phrase “uncultivated biodiversity” in a book recently published by the International Research Development Centre in Canada. Food Sovereignty and Uncultivated Biodiversity in South Asia: Essays on the Poverty of Food Policy and the Wealth of the Social Landscape promises to be a fascinating read.

Based on extensive field research in India and Bangladesh, with and by farming communities, the book offers both people-based and evidence-based perspectives on the value of ecological farming, the survival strategies of the very poor, and the ongoing contribution of biodiversity to livelihoods. It also introduces new concepts such as “the social landscape” and “the ethical relations underlying production systems” relevant to key debates concerning the cultural politics of food sovereignty, land tenure, and the economics of food systems. The authors are leading activists and accomplished researchers with a long history of engagement with farming communities and the peasant world in South Asia and elsewhere.

The whole book is available for download, but I might just have to spring for a printed copy because it comes with a DVD of farmer-made films that I’d love to see. Come to think of it, if anyone at IDRC is reading this, why not enter them in our competition?

Of course, “uncultivated biodiversity” doesn’t solve the problem of what to call those pesky species that are cultivated and used by people but remain neglected and underutilized by researchers. Suggestions?

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Kutch’s wild ass and Important Plant Areas

I blogged about some recent additions to the list of World Heritage Sites a couple of days back, and now I’ve come across a potential new candidate, which should get in on the strength of its name alone: the Wild Ass Sanctuary in the Rann of Kutch. The wild ass in question is Equus hemionus khur, the Indian wild ass, a subspecies of the onager, the Asiatic wild ass. The khur’s habitat does sound fascinating:

The Rann, the last habitat of the wild ass (Equus hemionus khur) covering an area of 4954 sq. km is one of the most remarkable and unique landscapes of its kind in the world, which is considered as a transitional area between marine and terrestrial ecosystems. During the monsoons, while the entire area gets inundated, as many as 74 elevated plateaus stand out in the area. The sanctuary also houses 253 flowering plant species, 93 species of invertebrates and 33 species of mammals including the Khur sub-species of wild ass.

It would be great to have a protected area which is so strongly focused on the conservation of a wild relative of a domesticated animal. Wish there were more of them on the crop wild relative side. We’ve just heard that the international network of protected areas needs to do a better job of covering crop centres of origin and diversity. Now, Britain is hardly a centre of agrobiodiversity, but it does have a few crop wild relatives, so I wonder whether the British boffins who wrote the WWF report on protected areas and crop wild relatives had any input in selecting the just-announced Important Plant Areas (IPA) of the UK. I expect they tried their best, and the selection criteria do mention crop wild relatives, but it seems as if they were pretty much an afterthought:

The IPA project was conceived in Europe in response to the increasing rate of loss of the irreplaceable wealth of Europe’s wild flowers and habitats through rapid economic development, urbanisation, and habitat destruction. The IPA programme is a means of identifying and protecting the most important sites for wild plant and habitats in Europe. In addition to the protection this will offer to threatened habitats and species (higher, lower plants and fungi), IPAs will also offer protection to a wide range of species including medicinal plants, relatives of crop plants, veteran trees and many common but declining species.

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Farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity

An analysis of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture’s provision on Farmers’ Rights argues that these rights are fundamental to the conservation of crop plant diversity. Among other things, the paper says that these aspects are most important:

  • seed legislation must permit farmers to store seed and planting material, to use, develop, exchange and sell it
  • indigenous varieties must remain publicly accessible and not protected by plant breeders’ rights. This can be achieved through plant registers that document all known varieties
  • farmers must be rewarded for the contribution that they make to biodiversity. This can include ensuring access to seed suitable for improving traditional varieties, support in conserving seed and planting material and sustainable utilisation of these resources
  • in order to safeguard these rights, farmers must participate in decision-making processes.

Farmers’ rights and agrobiodiversity was produced by GTZ, the German development donor, as part of its programme on Global Food Security and Agrobiodiversity.

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UNESCO World Heritage Sites and agricultural biodiversity

Two of the newly-inscribed sites in the UNESCO World Heritage List caught my eye because of their agricultural biodiversity connections: both, interestingly, are in Europe. The first is the Lavaux vineyard terraces, 30 km of 1000-year-old agricultural landscape around Lake Geneva. The second is the primeval beech forest of the Carpathians, in Slovakia and Ukraine. However, I must admit that this second one only caught me eye by mistake, as it were. I thought it was in these forests that the last aurochs lived, but that was ignorance, pure ignorance on my part. It is the wisent that lives there, still. The last recorded aurochs died in 1627 in the royal forest of Jaktorow in Masovia, central Poland. Somewhere else entirely. But I wonder if there are any other wild relatives — of either livestock or crops — in the primeval Carpathian beech forest.

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Stover quality

A couple of papers today on stover quality, and how to get it. Stover is just the dried stalks and leaves of a crop, left in the field after the grain has been harvested. In many places around the world, it is almost as important as the grain itself, because it is used as animal forage or fodder. Sheep and goats and other animals are often allowed to roam around the harvested fields and eat their fill of the dried remains of the crop as well as any weeds and other volunteer plants they may find.

How to get the best quality stover, in terms of its digestibility and nutrient compositions? Well, as in so many things, genetics and management, according to work by three CG Centres. A paper on pearl millet in India by ICRISAT and ILRI researchers points to the importance of genetics: landraces had better quality stover than hybrids, though it came at the expense of yield. On the other hand, a paper from ICARDA in Syria found that rotations involving growing legumes such as medics or vetch in alternate years improved the protein content of both the grain and stubble of durum wheat. Now, I wonder, is there an interaction between the two? Do some varieties respond better than others to management in terms of their nutritional quality?