Posts

Posted on

Facts are not sacred; values are

Scientists, especially young fire-in-the-belly scientists but also many who have grown old making a living at it, are often convinced that if only people understood (or believed?) as they do, those people would come to the “correct” decisions. I know, I was one myself for a long time. Now, Jonathan Swift and Upton Sinclair are my guys. 1 Increasingly, though, it is surely becoming clear that facts alone change few minds. Last week’s New Scientist carried an editorial to that effect, about climate change. Adam Corner wrote:

How did the rational arguments of science and economics fail to win the day? There are many reasons, but an important one concerns human nature.

Through a growing body of psychological research, we know that scaring or shaming people into sustainable behaviour is likely to backfire. We know that it is difficult to overcome the psychological distance between the concept of climate change – not here, not now – and people’s everyday lives. We know that beliefs about the climate are influenced by extreme and even daily weather.

What has that to do with me here? Consider this video (and do, please, watch it through):

To me it is utterly charming; amusing, entertaining, well-executed, high-quality. It pushes all the right buttons. Never mind that a farmer growing spuds for The Man is unlikely to have a Big Red Barn or chickens clucking in the farmyard. It is clearly OUTRAGEOUS that she is not allowed to save her own potato propagating material, or “seeds” as our scientific friends might say. And I’m pretty sure that is how it will be seen, and welcomed, by everybody whose confirmation biases it confirms.

Like me, wearing my hat labelled Communicator.

And hated by everyone wearing a Scientist or Policymaker or Seed Industry hat. And me, wearing my other hats.

There is plenty that I could say about both the content and the assumptions on which that charming film is built, but it would be folly. There is also plenty I could say to the Scientists and Policymakers and Seed Industrialists about making their own case, and that would probably be folly too.

So I’m looking forward to your comments.

Posted on

Featured: Banana export

Anne Vezina rails at banana taxonomists, and adds:

…the problem with exporting Misi Luki is that its skin bruises easily. While it’s true that local banana landraces are underutilized in general, it’s even truer of the bananas domesticated in the Pacific, which Misi Luki is not. The best known are the Maoli, Popoulu and Iholena bananas but the western Pacific is also host to a diversity of cultivars that have yet to be classified, much less evaluated for their export potential.

Posted on

Local Samoan banana variety a hit in NZ

drierMy friend and former colleague Stephen Hazelman of the Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC) has been telling me about his new toy, a drier that an NGO in Samoa called Women in Business Development Inc. is using to process a local banana variety for export to New Zealand. You can see it on the left, thanks to Stephen. Drying overcomes the need for quarantine treatments in NZ. They harvest from certified organic farmers, ripen the fruits for 4-7 days, peel, soak in lime juice to stop blackening, then put in the drier for 15-20 hours, cool and pack in nice yellow 50g packages for export. They are also looking at teas, cinnamon, other fruits like pineapple and mangos, and also vegetables.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAThe variety involved is a small, sweet, high-altitude local type called Misi Luki. You can read all about its history and characteristics, and also see some pictures here. 2 It’s listed in ProMusa’s checklist of banana cultivars as an AAB type. If the banana were a neglected or underutilized species (NUS), Stephen could have reported on this under the “upgrading value chains” theme of the recent conference in Accra. But of course what works for weird and wonderful local landraces of the staples could also work for NUS. No news on whether Misi Luki is on any gourmet menus. But that’s another story…

Posted on

Happy World Chocolate Day!

chocoThe previous post about the International Treaty on ITPGRFA allows me to segue seamlessly to today’s World Cocoa and Chocolate Day event at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad. Seamlessly, I hear you ask? Stretching a point, surely. Well, no, because everyone knows that the International Cocoa Genebank, maintained at said institution’s Cocoa Research Centre, is one of the collections which are available in the Multilateral System of the Treaty under its Article 15. You can tour the place, you know. Anyway, I’m hoping one of my inside people will come through with some photos of the celebrations. Stay tuned.

Posted on

ITPGRFA GB5: Tying up the loose ends

As promised, here’s a pdf of the IISD report on the fifth session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, which convened from 24-28 September 2013 in Muscat, Oman. And there’s also my storification.

The report echoes the view of Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the ITPGRFA, expressed in his closing statement, that the main achievement of the meeting was to agree a system to look into enhancing the working of the Multilater System for Access and Benefit Sharing.

Here’s the money quote:

Hailed as a major success by all involved in the Treaty processes, the launch of this new intersessional working group provides the opportunity for the Treaty and the agricultural sector as a whole to reposition themselves in the global framework of genetic resource governance with a view to more effectively contributing to global agricultural development and food security. The outcome of this new process will determine whether the Treaty will live up to the challenges and flourish, or whether it will wither away.

LATER: And that global framework just got a bit more complex.