The day after the Global Tree Assessment is published by BGCI, which revealed there are about 60,000 tree species in the world, is also a good time to link again to the wonderful European Atlas of Forest Tree Species. Now all we need is the same thing for Brazil, which has about 9,000 of those 60,000. BTW, a very quick check suggests that about 1% of trees are crop wild relatives, globally. More on this later.
Are you a new or a traditional conservationist?
Although discussions about the aims and methods of conservation probably date back as far as conservation itself, the ‘new conservation’ debate as such was sparked by Kareiva and Marvier’s 2012 article entitled What is conservation science?
Two prominent positions have emerged in this debate, that of Kareiva and Marvier, which we label ‘new conservation’ (top-left quadrant of the figure below), and a strongly opposed viewpoint that we label ‘traditional conservation’ (bottom-right quadrant).
These positions can be clearly distinguished by their views on nature and people in conservation on the one hand, and on the role of corporations and capital in conservation on the other hand (the two axes in the figure).
Want to know which quadrant you fall into? Take the survey.
I did, and this is what I got.
Which basically means I’m wishy-washily neutral (agnostic? conflicted?) on the role of the private sector, and apparently think conservation needs to show some benefit for people, in particular poor people. And in that it seems I’m pretty near the centroid of opinion, at least when it comes to the last 100 people who took the survey. Of course, this is for biodiversity conservation. I wonder if the results would be different for conservation of agricultural biodiversity.
Mapping the hell out of maize diversity in Mexico
Thanks to a Facebook post, I’ve just come across the “mapoteca digital” of CONABIO, the Comisión Nacional para el Conocimiento y Uso de la Biodiversidad of Mexico. ((Which, incidentally, has one of the coolest street addresses ever.)) It has point maps of the distribution of both wild and cultivated beans and calabazas, and of wild maize; but most interesting to me were the maps of the distribution of the richness of cultivated maize races, based on collections made at different times in the past. The data were put together by the “Proyecto Global de Maíces” (2006-2010), and the maps are also available in a PDF.
Here’s the map for 1940-1965, based on about 3,000 collections.
And here’s the map for 1991-2000, based on 12,000 collections.
The legend used in both maps is at the left here. Looking at the maps, lots of questions came to mind. Why are we getting higher numbers of races in the 1990’s? Is it that the collecting was more thorough then? Or are races moving around more now? There is lots of information on the individual races on the project website, including actual and potential distribution maps. And you can download the raw data. So another thing that came to mind was that surely someone must have gone through all this stuff in detail. And sure enough, yes someone had indeed gone through all this stuff in detail, Peralta & Golicher in 2014. ((Perales, H., & Golicher, D. (2014). Mapping the Diversity of Maize Races in Mexico PLoS ONE, 9 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114657))
The high rank correlation between the three collection efforts indicate that relative abundance of races has not changed considerably since 1950. Races that were common in 1950 were also common in 2005, and the same can be said for rare races, none of these were apparently more common in 1950. Correspondingly, the comparison of distribution and richness models for the three sampling efforts does not suggest a general decline in richness nor in distribution for 43 of the 47 races studied, and in the other four cases the declines are relatively minor and require verification. The recent increase in distribution for two races (Tuxpeño and Celaya) may be explained by the outstanding importance these have had as components in commercial cultivars, it is not uncommon to find recycled and creolized landraces that had their origin as commercial seeds. Also, no extinctions were reported for the 47 races studied since all were sampled in the last collection effort between 1997 and 2010. Therefore, in a broad sense, at the race level of classification we do not find signs of substantial genetic erosion between 1943 and 2010. That is not to say no losses of local populations have occurred.
I can’t for the life of me understand why I haven’t blogged about this paper before (or indeed the project that generated the data), bringing together as it does two of my very favourite things, agrobiodiversity and mapping ((Quite apart from undermining the genetic erosion narrative.)), but I’m more than happy to rectify that oversight here and now. I can’t help thinking there’s more to be mined from this dataset yet.
A focus on farmers
A whole bunch of interesting reports for your delectation today. From our friends Ola Westengen ((Who I believe has contributed here, in the interest of full disclosure.)), Teshome Hunduma and Kristine Skarbø at NORAGRIC comes “From Genebanks to Farmers. A study of approaches to introduce genebank material to farmers’ seed systems.”
This report reviews strategies, methodologies and projects that exist to facilitate direct access to genebank material for farmers. Based on a literature review, a survey as well as interviews and data collection from key actors in conservation and development oriented seed system work, we trace trends in the field and develop a typology of approaches.
It’s not long, so read the whole thing. But a couple of things to whet your appetite. First, the categorization of approaches:
- Reintroduction
- Community Seed Banks (CSB)
- Participatory Plant Breeding (PPB)
- Emergency Seed Interventions
- Variety Introduction
- Integrated Seed System Approaches
You can argue with it, but I do like a taxonomy to start things off. Second, the data.
…farmers, farmer organizations and NGOs indeed comprise a substantial user group of the CGIAR genebanks, receiving some 7% of the samples, on par with the distribution to commercial sector requestors.
Always good to have the data. And finally, the challenges: (1) reaching scale, (2) achieving long term sustainability, and (3) legal aspects. In particular scaling up, always a bugbear.
The scale challenge is both a question of seed availability and the number of beneficiaries involved. Genebanks are only able to distribute small quantities of seeds and in all approaches described here the seed multiplication step is to a lesser (e.g. PPB) or larger extent (e.g. emergency seed interventions) critical. There is furthermore a need for exploring ways to scale up in terms of numbers of farmers reached. Some of these approaches, in particular PPB and CSBs, are so resource intensive that the number of farmers directly involved in each project is likely to remain limited. On the other hand, the crowdsourcing approach to varietal evaluation promoted in the Seeds4Needs initiative coordinated by Bioversity International represents a promising strategy for large scale on farm evaluation of diverse portfolio of crops.
Susan Bragdon’s work is quoted in the report, and concidentally she has three (count them) things out this month, published by the Quaker United Nations Office (QUNO).
- Are Small-scale Farmers at the Table? Reflections on Small-scale Farmers’ Participation in Global and National Decision-Making: “…six recommendations for how multilateral institutions that host negotiations or dialogues can encourage and facilitate the participation of small-scale farmers.”
- The Foundations of Food Security – Ensuring Support to Small-scale Farmers Managing Agricultural Biodiversity: “…a rights-based approach supported by governments nationally and internationally [e.g., the Plant Treaty] open broader possibilities of predictable, stable support.”
- The Evolution of Rights and Responsibilities over Agricultural Biodiversity: “…suggestions on how to create a system that supports the critical role that agricultural biodiversity plays in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”
The culmination of this flurry of activity from Susan and QUNO is a call to action paper, The Time is Ripe for Governments to Strengthen Sustainable and Food-Secure Farming, in which….
…the Small-Scale Farmers and Agrobiodiversity Dialogue to Action Group (DtA) calls upon the international community to mobilize resources for a more proactive role of the public sector in supporting small-scale farmers, their seed systems and the protection of agricultural biodiversity. Furthermore, the group calls upon national governments to engage in consultation with small-scale farmers to identify what they require in order to effectively engage in activities to support the conversation and sustainable use of biodiversity and to achieve secure livelihoods.
Ok, so there’s a lot to take in here, but if I were to try to encapsulate the take-home message for you, it would be this phrase from the description of the second of Susan’s papers listed above:
…increased private sector interest in agriculture and food systems is reason for equally vibrant governments acting in the public interest.
And international genebanks too, I suppose.
This is what’s threatening crops around the world
Readers with a long memory will remember the Global Crop Loss Survey, which we blogged about here back in November. Just to remind everyone else:
Over a period of three months (November 2016 – January 2017), 1142 responses from 216 respondents in 67 countries were recorded during the Global Crop Loss Survey organized by the Crop Loss Subject Matter Committee of the ISPP [International Congress of Plant Pathology]. This appears to be the first Survey of this kind ever conducted.
Well, some preliminary results are out.
At this stage, a key question concerns the overall representativeness of the information gathered. Across all five crops, experts have reported losses lower than 1% in 15.4% of the cases, between 1 and 5% in 37.3% of the cases, between 5 and 20% in 33.7% of the cases, between 20 and 60% in 11.5% of the cases, and higher than 60% in 2.1% of the cases. A simple aggregate weighted average of these losses, in which loss levels are weighted by their reported frequencies, gives an overall crop loss of 11.7%. This figure would represent the average loss caused by an average disease (or pest), (1) when occurring, and (2) in the absence of any other disease or pest. Although a preliminary result, the estimated average loss is well within the ranges of global or regional crop losses that have been reported in the literature.
The money table is this:
Would be interesting to compare these data with the investment being made in breeding against, and indeed in germplasm evaluation by genebanks for, different threats. Analysis is continuing…