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How would you measure agricultural production?

Measuring agricultural productivity is easy, right? Kilogrammes per hectare and you’re done. But that’s almost the least interesting thing the land is producing, or so I thought. Then a tweet passed my way yesterday.

I saw that because someone I follow was, unsurprisingly, enthusiastic.

And despite myself, and despite the fact that I know that actual discussion is all but impossible over there, I tried to make a case for nutrition per hectare. Predictably, I guess, that ended up with a smug pat-on-the-head putdown that sent me whizzing to the channels under my control, ready to think a little more deeply about how to measure agricultural productivity.

If you’re an industrial farmer, growing grain to sell, then I guess kg per ha is a reasonable measure. You might even think kcal per ha a bit too fancy pants. And the less waste straw you have to deal with, the better. For a small-scale farmer, however, perhaps with a few animals to bed and feed, that straw is decidedly not waste. It is part of production. The weight of seed is important, but it isn’t the only thing.

Now go further, and imagine that you’re eating what the land produces. Maybe now kcal per ha makes a bit more sense, but only a bit more, and not only because it takes more than energy to sustain life. By that measure, half a hectare of beans and half a hectare of maize or wheat is probably less productive than a hectare of pure wheat. Cereals and pulses, however, make up for one another’s amino acid deficiencies, so the total nutrition that a person could derive from that half and half hectare is greater than from a pure hectare of either. Carve out some space in that hectare for a few rows of leafy greens and what have you, and the productivity of the land, measured as “nutrition” is even higher. Allow a few animals to process the “waste” and it is higher still.

Which is why I think nutrition per hectare is the best measure of agricultural production.

Calories are, of course, part of nutrition, but by no means the most important part over the long run. We have tables of recommended daily allowances for macronutrients like Calories (or their proxies) and for micronutrients. We could calculate nutrients per Calorie for different kinds of produce. We could even try to express productivity as the percentage of the RDA for all nutrients that would be provided by some area of land. We could do lots of things more sensible — and more difficult — than Calories per hectare.

p.s. I want to put a marker down here for a couple of things I know are important and that I am choosing to ignore for now. One is the inputs necessary to achieve the agricultural outputs. The other is the sustainability and variance of the production over time.

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Brainfood: Domestication stats, Apple vulnerability, Himalayan fermentation, Tree diversity, Grasslands double, Shiitake cultivation, Lablab core, Ethiopian sweet potato, Georgian grape

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Genebanks and farmers

As they cooperate with seed companies, the gene banks do not feel responsible for distribution of seeds to their prime users, the peasants. Thus, the peasant is not taken as a stakeholder of the plant breeding and the seed conservation and production. But, as the choice of seeds influences the type of agriculture, of landscape, of environment and of food, it is hypocritical not letting this choice, this right to the peasants. It is essential to put the peasants in the heart of seed conservation and to esteem the social role of seeds: they allow people to produce food, to share knowledge and traditions, and to be independent from any corporate dependence.

That’s according to Lena Haun, Agrobiodiversity Campaigner Intern at Eco Ruralis, after talking to genebanks in France and Romania. But with all due respect, I find it very hard to believe the premise that “gene banks do not feel responsible for distribution of seeds to their prime users, the peasants.” Want an example? Here’s Dave Ellis from the genebank of the International Potato Center:

For example, we found in our collection potato cultivars that were collected in the last 30 to 40 years in Peru’s Sacred Valley, and gave those varieties back to the communities that live in the Parque de la Papa, close to Cusco. Now they are growing and testing them again. This is really important, as the Sacred Valley is one place in the world where we have documented evidence of the need for flexibility in potato cultivation due to a rapidly changing climate.

I think Dave feels responsible for distribution of potato diversity from the CIP genebank to its prime users, the peasants. Don’t you? So do the partners involved in Bioversity’s Seeds for Needs initiative, 1 for example. And every national genebank manager I’ve ever spoken to, for that matter.

Sure, genebanks collaborate with seed companies. And what’s wrong with that, if farmers end up with more, better choices? Anyway, they also collaborate with public sector plant breeders. And work directly with farmers in many, many cases. They could probably do it more. But to say that genebanks don’t feel a responsibility for making the diversity they maintain available to farming communities is just plain wrong.