Posts

Posted on

Impact of climate change on business apparently does not include loss of crop diversity

I suppose I should have expected it. A new UNEP report is out, entitled GEO-5 for Business: Impacts of a Changing Environment on the Corporate Sector. GEO-5 being, of course, the fifth Global Environment Outlook, “a consultative, participatory process that builds capacity for conducting integrated environmental assessments for reporting on the state, trends and outlooks of the environment.”

These are the risks the consultative, participatory report highlights for the food and beverage industry:

  • Changes in availability, quality, price, and sources of agricultural products due to climate change and other environmental changes
  • Increased cost of fossil fuel-based energy
  • Reduced crop yields due to water scarcity
  • Conflicts among different users of limited water resources
  • Increased competition for arable land
  • Depletion of seafood stocks
  • Increased consumer and regulatory pressure to reduce environmental impacts of meat production and of chemicals and fertilizers

And these are the opportunities:

  • New markets for alternative supplies or more climate-resilient food varieties
  • Opportunities for businesses in new agricultural growing zones
  • Expanded markets for organic foods and sustainable food production
  • Reputational benefits from sustainable food product certifications

Nothing, however, about the risk of loss of crop diversity, and how this would impact the ability to supply those burgeoning, beckoning markets with the needed “climate-resilient food varieties.”

Which, as I say, should probably not have surprised me. But still.

Posted on

Brainfood: Pear history, Markets & biodiversity, Conserving small populations, Niche & range, Sustainability in the US, Production forecasts, Sheep differences

Posted on

Where exactly is that zeitgeist?

Something is up, Jeremy said a couple of days ago, by way of introduction to a pair of pieces which he suggested, tongue no doubt at least partly in cheek, showed “the zeitgeist firmly embracing the idea of agricultural biodiversity, preferably ancient agricultural biodiversity, as a suitable response to climate change.”

Well, if something was up, it is now firmly down, and as for the zeitgeist, its name is biotech. Because yesterday some of the masterminds behind GM won the World Food Prize. And, probably not coincidentally, the Rt Hon Owen Paterson, UK Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, gave a speech to Rothamsted Research which ended with this rousing call:

GM isn’t necessarily about making life easier for farmers or making their businesses more profitable, although I believe that there are great opportunities for the industry. It’s about finding non-chemical solutions to pests and diseases. It’s about fortifying food with vitamin A so that children in the poorest countries don’t go blind or die. It’s about making crops durable enough to survive sustained drought. It’s about developing new medicines. It’s about feeding families in some of the poorest parts of the world. We cannot expect to feed tomorrow’s population with yesterday’s agriculture. We have to use every tool at our disposal.

Meanwhile, the search for that elusive middle ground, in which every tool at our disposal is not only used, but gets an equal chance to be honed and oiled, continues.

LATER: How would you facilitate a truly constructive debate about that middle ground? Here’s how NOT to do it:

Setting up a debate that is framed around risk, rather than food politics, focused on a single subset of technology, rather than one that explores all the options, structured around science in an area where questions about outcomes are impossible to answer with certainty, about a technology that has unclear benefits to the public and the developing world but very obvious benefits to large firms that the public distrusts (partly because of their unclear relationships to politicians), seems to me at least like a waste of taxpayers’ money.

Posted on

Plant breeding as a public good. Again.

Back in February 2012 we were happy to spread the word about the first Student Organic Seed Symposium, in Vermont in the US. We heard no more about it, of course. 1 Such is our institutional memory, however, that an official report on the meeting, in a proper journal no less, caught our eye and demanded to be shared.

It’s an interesting read, and full of hope. There is clearly a demand for breeding to meet the needs of not just organic but other sorts of what might be called “proper” farming. 2 And there are young professionals who want to meet those demands. The tricky part is how to make it pay. From the brief details in the report, it seems that US government funding and private philanthropy are helping to train breeders and support specific breeding programmes, a return to plant breeding as a public good. Will that be enough?