Before you all start responding to my recent post by pointing me in the direction of the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity paper on the impact of trade liberalization on agricultural biodiversity, let me say that I have read it, and that I stick to my call for more thorough analysis. First, despite its title, the CBD paper concentrates on the presumed effects of liberalization – via changes in land use and production intensification – on biodiversity in general rather than agricultural biodiversity in particular, something that was also discussed by an older IUCN paper. Second, it repeats a few too many times how complicated the issue is. And finally, it provides little in the way of empirical data.
Workshop on knowledge management and communication
From IAALD, news of a workshop sponsored by GTZ and FAO, on “Communicating Knowledge: From good practice to systematic change.” The conference web site gives access to the Agenda and Papers, and at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything about blogs or blogging. Maybe the participants will raise the topic. It does seem an odd omission, but maybe I’m biassed.
Subsidise this
There is plenty of analysis out there on the topic of agricultural subsidies and their actual or potential effect on things like growth of the farm sector, productivity, rural population levels and employment rates, farmers’ incomes and the number and average size of farms. But I haven’t seen much empirical data – or even theoretical discussion – of what subsidies (or the lack of them) mean for agrobiodiversity on farms. The data and discussion must be out there, it’s just that I don’t know the agricultural economics literature well enough to even know where to look.
So it was kind of interesting that I happened across two pieces of work in the past couple of weeks that shed some – albeit oblique – light on the subject. A 2003 article on The New Farm looks at what happened in New Zealand when agricultural subsidies were phased out: starting in 1984, the kiwis kept “a basic social security framework … funding for agricultural research, … and measures to keep agricultural pests from leaping around the world, and (did) away with the rest.â€Â
The New Zealand experience strongly suggests that most supposed objectives of agricultural subsidies and market protections – to maintain a traditional countryside, protect the environment, ensure food security, combat food scarcity, support family farms and slow corporate take-over of agriculture – are better achieved by their absence.
The paper suggests that the end of subsidies forced farmers to diversify, embrace organic methods, let marginal land revert to bush and innovate furiously, including by adopting new varieties. It’s hard to be entirely sure from the information presented, but on balance it would seem that (agricultural) biodiversity was better conserved and better used after subsidies ended.
I also came across a newly-released FAO paper entitled “Long Term Farming Trends. An Inquiry Using Agricultural Censuses,†a meta-analysis of 43 agricultural censuses across 17 countries. The authors look at differences among countries, and changes in the last 30 years or so, in things like land inequality and farm size, but also crop diversification, by which they basically mean the extent to which non-staple crops are being grown. They found, for example, that small farms tend to concentrate on staple crops more than bigger farms do, and that agricultural openness (i.e. lack of subsidies) “is correlated with diversification away from staple crops.†Though this relationship did not hold for countries with high population levels, the result concords with what happened in New Zealand.
You see what I mean when I said that the light being shed is at best oblique. Neither paper discusses diversity within crops much (or at all!), and their concept of “diversification†was somewhat crude. That wasn’t really their aim, so you can’t blame the authors. But with WTO members discussing the freeing up of agricultural markets (when they manage to discuss anything at all), I do wonder whether agricultural economists are devoting enough (or any) thinking to the possible effects on agricultural biodiversity. I look forward to being reassured by someone out there.
Buffett sweet potato balls
Lets get this part out of the way: search Google for “Buffett sweet potato,” having seen an announcement at Papgren, and the number 3 link is for Buffett sweet potato balls. But that’s not what I was after.
I was after details of a US$3 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to enhance sweet potato for Africa. The project has two aims: to boost resistance to a couple of diseases — sweet potato feathery mottle virus and sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus — and to improve the nutritional content of sweet potatoes, most notably by increasing folate, iron and zinc.
Excellent. Africa needs higher yields and more nutritious diets. I don’t know what approach the Danforth will take, but as they’ve teamed up with the Monsanto company it is possible that there will be some direct manipulation of DNA involved. Again, excellent, because sweet potato is generally reproduced by taking clones — cuttings, actually, often called slips — from parent material, so farmers should be able to distribute any material they receive. But, I wonder, just how many different varieties will the project engineer? And isn’t there a risk that this effort, particularly if it is successful, will blanket Africa with a few genetically similar varieties that do not have the diversity to withstand the next disease epidemic, making that, when it comes, all the more disastrous?
Rhetorical questions, I know, and ones that I’ve asked before. The funny part is, nobody else seems to be asking them. That Google search, in news? Precisely two items, and one of those is essentially the press release. The other is kinda fun.
Who’s afraid of trans fats?
In “Fear of Frying,†David Schleifer gives us, in the words of his subtitle, “a brief history of trans fats,†and it’s a fascinating read. Trans fats are partially hydrogenated oils: attaching more hydrogen atoms to the oily backbone turns liquids into solids. First introduced at the turn of the century, they were all the rage by the 1960s because they were easier to use (e.g., in deep frying) and didn’t go rancid quite as quickly, but also because of (never fully substantiated) hype about how bad saturated fats were for you.
Some fifteen years ago, however, studies started to associate them with heart disease, diabetes and infertility. They have recently been banned from New York City restaurants. But unlike big tobacco, big food didn’t “deny the good science, buy some bad science, and try to avoid regulation.†What they did – despite the difficulties and costs involved – is jump on alternatives to trans fats, even before consumers started to change their minds in large numbers. In effect, they fostered perceptions of risk to drum up demand for a product that addressed that risk: value adding and niche marketing through fear. What’s the next big thing? Omega-3s fats, essential nutritionally but destroyed by hydrogenation. But it probably won’t be long before something bad is found out about them too and we all get onto the next bandwagon.
All very scary, but how is this relevant to the subject matter of this blog? Well, each of these shifts in consumer demand required new technologies, including new crop varieties. So, for example, the National Sunflower Association and the United Soybean Board, among others, developed cultivars whose oil does not need partial hydrogenation. But these are liquid, and difficult to use in baked goods, so palm oil is increasingly used, apparently. And Monsanto is projecting unveiling an enhanced omega-3 soybean by 2012.
Ok, so that’s one way to look at the role of agricultural diversity. Another is that you should stay away from processed foods and try to base your diet on a diversity of fresh ingredients, traditionally prepared. Which, by sheer coincidence, is the subject – or one of them – of a Time magazine piece this week on “How the World Eats.â€