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Observations and some conclusions regarding genebank handling fees

CGN is considering the introduction of handling fees for the samples it distributes to its users. To explore the pro’s and con’s of this option, it started a discussion in the international genebank community by (1) posting a message on this weblog, (2) correspondence with the ECPGR Steering Committee via its mailing list, and (3) bilateral correspondence with some relevant actors. This request for feedback resulted in numerous valuable responses. Below we briefly highlight major outcomes of the discussion and their implications for the next steps that CGN will consider to take.

Budget shortages and handling fees a common theme

As a first outcome, it became apparent that the issue of requesting handling fees for genebank samples has been recently discussed in several genebanks. However, so far only very few (e.g. AVRDC, Taiwan and NIAS, Japan) have actually introduced handling fees. Regardless the outcome of the discussion, we feel that the discussion has a value in its own right, since it triggers attention for the difficult funding position of a number of genebanks. Whether genebanks can cope with deficiencies in their funding is of course highly relevant, given the crucial role that genebanks play in plant breeding and crop research, especially in the context of longer term world food security under climate change.

The nature of a handling fee

Generating regular income from the distribution of germplasm is clearly not CGNs intention; this would not be compatible with the conditions of the ITPGRFA, nor with AEGIS. Handling fees refer to relatively small contributions to cover the costs of handling the request, including the associated labour, material and postage costs, plus the transaction costs of the payment. To our understanding the ‘value’ of the accessions is thus irrelevant to answer the question of introducing handling fees or not by CGN or any other genebank, assuming this value exceeds the handling costs in the first place.

The fee level

A handling fee of €50 per accession that CGN initially proposed, was generally considered far too high for various reasons. Indeed, it might be more appropriate to calculate the true distribution costs and recalculate the resulting fees, that might possibly consist of a charge per transaction and a charge per accession. However, for some specific categories of material, that fall outside the definition of PGR in the narrow sense (mapping populations, allele collections, etc.) and that have not been included in the MLS, different charges might be applied not only covering the handling fees.

Transaction costs

It is expected that the costs of financial transactions can be kept low at both ends (provider and recipient) by using ICT solutions that are currently available.

Exemptions

Some groups of users will be exempted from the handling fees. Groups that are currently considered for exemption include users in least developed countries (according to the United Nations category), and partners of CGN that support CGN by regenerating and/or evaluating material as an in-kind contribution. Requests that can be considered repatriation will also be exempted. It seems fair if the distribution costs made for the exempted requests will be carried by CGN, and will not be compensated by increasing the fees of the other requests.

Possible effects of handling fee introduction

Handling fees will not only compensate distribution costs, they are also expected to considerably reduce the number of distributed samples, and thus in the longer term regeneration costs. Users may become more critical regarding the number of samples they request if there is a price tag connected to the individual accession, and some users might decide not to request material at all or try to get the material from other genebanks. This expected reduction in the number of requested samples can be both positive and negative, since it may avoid less well considered requests for material, but it may also deter serious users. The latter will in general be undesirable as genebanks have been mandated to promote the use of their materials. Also, the willingness of users to collaborate with the providing genebank, to give feedback and send evaluation data back to the genebank may be negatively impacted.

Handling fees and liability

The service that a genebank provides should be of appropriate quality, irrespective of whether handling fees are charged or not. Introduction of handling fees should not affect liability issues: a genebank provides the material as good as it can, and cannot be held liable for any damages due to the lack of quality of the seed material or the associated information. However, this issue should be investigated more in depth before the introduction of handling fees.

Related issues

In the discussion a few interesting issues arose that may justify a separate study or discussion. For example, it appeared that some of the major genebanks are confronted with a steep increase in the number of distributed samples over the last few years. What has caused this increase? To which extent might the following factors have contributed: (1) are breeding companies building up their own PGR collections since they fear these resources may get less accessible over time, (2) do new marker assisted breeding methods allow for more efficient use of exotic material, (3) or do websites and better use of other means of communication render the use of PGR much more attractive and easy. Related to this question is another lack of insight: what do we know about the distribution of genebank material to users by individual genebanks, how do different user groups compare, and what use conditions do apply on the distributed germplasm? The answers to those questions would also facilitate further deliberations on handling fees, but answers may not be feasible in the short term.

CGN’s decision-making process

In the coming months, CGN will continue its consultations with stakeholders, including its users and its main funding agency, the Dutch ministry of Economic Affairs, Agriculture and Innovation. A decision regarding the introduction of handling fees is expected to be made in the last quarter of this year at the earliest. In the meanwhile, we invite all our colleagues and stakehlders to further contribute to the discusions on the introduction of a handling fee for genebank accessions. In turn, we shall update you regularly ablout any new insights or developments.

Bert Visser & Theo van Hintum (CGN)

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Featured: Institutions and policy

Jacob riffs on the (pointless) opposition of policy and agriculture, with suggestions about the kind of agricultural research that is needed.

The point for agricultural research is that it is not enough to focus only on boosting output. Research choices have implications for access to food. For instance, in many cases breeding for small-scale producers (who consume most of what they grow) may be more effective for food security than breeding for commercial agriculture, even though the latter may be more effective in terms of productivity gains.

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More on economists and Malthus

Catching up with some reading yesterday, I was struck by something Tyler Cowen, one of my favourite economists, said in response to a question about the Malthusian trap, a recurrent fixation of mine. It is the penultimate question in this lot.

Cowen takes what I consider an unnecessarily flip attitude to a very real problem.

Eventually the world will end, and somewhere along the line wages and living standards will be quite low. But until that happens, Malthus isn’t a very useful guide to food and living standards.

Even more astonishing, he cites India’s terrific increase in food production, thanks to the Green Revolution, without wondering why it is that the country still has such very high levels of child malnutrition and stunting.

The real problem is bad institutions, such as are found in North Korea, so our worst enemy is ourselves, not some oppressive force of population multiplication.

Malthus’ point, of course, is not that humans increase oppressively; it is that they do so more rapidly than agricultural productivity. Leave that aside. Is it all really the fault of bad institutions? And if so, why single out North Korea? Why not India?

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Sustainability under siege

My cynicism about global gabfests intended to improve the human condition yields to no-one. So you can imagine how I felt when work asked me to share my thoughts on Rio+20. Delighted, I shared them. They were judged unsuitable. So, this being the age of the internet, I shared them myself. Takeaway thought: People – with the possible exception of some biologists – have no clue about what sustainability actually entails. If they did, they wouldn’t even pretend to embrace it. It’s scary.

It thus came as a pleasant surprise to discover that, on the eve of Rio+20, PLoS Biology published an essay on The Macroecology of Sustainability. 1 Joseph Burger and his colleagues do a fine job of putting the evidence out there for all to see. Their takeaway thought:

Over the past few decades, decreasing per capita rates of consumption of petroleum, phosphate, agricultural land, fresh water, fish, and wood indicate that the growing human population has surpassed the capacity of the Earth to supply enough of these essential resources to sustain even the current population and level of socio-economic development.

In other words, never mind about becoming sustainable some time in the future. Things aren’t sustainable now.

They offer many examples to get their point across, although all require a certain openness to be convincing. The salmon fishery of Bristol Bay (the bit of the Bering Sea north of that line of islands stretching west from Alaska) is lauded as a success of sustainable fisheries management because annual runs of sockeye salmon – 70% of which is harvested each year – have not declined. Which is great from a small-minded human perspective. But as Burger at al. point out: 2

When humans take about 70% of Bristol Bay sockeye runs as commercial catch, this means a 70% reduction in the number of mature salmon returning to their native waters to spawn and complete their life cycles. It also means a concomitant reduction in the supply of salmon to support populations of predators, such as grizzly bears, bald eagles, and indigenous people, all of which historically relied on salmon for a large proportion of their diet. Additionally, a 70% harvest means annual removal of more than 83,000 metric tonnes of salmon biomass, consisting of approximately 12,000, 2,500, and 330 tonnes of carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, respectively. These marine-derived materials are no longer deposited inland in the Bristol Bay watershed, where they once provided important nutrient subsidies to stream, lake, riparian, and terrestrial ecosystems. So, for example, one apparent consequence is that net primary production in one oligotrophic lake in the Bristol Bay watershed has decreased ‘‘to about 1/3 of its level before commercial fishing’’. Seventy percent of Bristol Bay salmon biomass and nutrients are now exported to eastern Asia, western Europe, and the continental US, which are the primary markets for commercially harvested wild Alaskan salmon.

The Bristol Bay salmon fishery exemplifies the first of three principles without which any approach to sustainability is bound to fail.

1 Thermodynamics and the Zero-Sum Game

[C]ontinual flows and transformations of energy are required to maintain highly organized, far-from-equilibrium states of complex systems, including human societies.

2 Scale and Embededness

[S]ocioeconomic systems are not closed or isolated, but instead are open, interconnected, and embedded in larger environmental systems.

3 Global Constraints

The emphasis on local and regional scales—as seen in the majority of the sustainability literature […] —is largely irrelevant if the human demand for essential energy and materials exceeds the capacity of the Earth to supply these resources and if the release of wastes exceeds the capacity of the biosphere to absorb or detoxify these substances.

This last is the one on which I have been fixated, and the most useful element of the paper, for me, is that Burger et al. bring the old estimates of human appropriation up to date, not only with respect to primary productivity – the sun’s energy captured by plants – but also for a host of other resources on which human life depends.

The bottom line is that the growing human population and economy are being fed by unsustainable use of finite resources of fossil fuel energy, fertilizers, and arable land and by unsustainable harvests of ‘‘renewable resources’’ such as fish, wood, and fresh water. Furthermore, attaining sustainability is additionally complicated by inevitable yet unpredictable changes in both human socioeconomic conditions and the extrinsic global environment. Sustainability will always be a moving target and there cannot be a single long-term stable solution.

Of course there is a backlash 3 against this kind of conclusion, and PLoS Biology gives space to a rejoinder from John Matthews and Frederick Boltz of Conservation International, who ask “Are we doomed yet?”. 4 And of course I am biassed, but I did not find anything really compelling in their piece, which seemed to be long on arm-waving appeals and short of anything approaching evidence. They do advance some cases, such as the Montreal Protocol to stop the ozone hole, but most of these fall into the succession of successes that have caused almost everybody, especially economists and policy makers, to discredit the fundamental party-pooping dynamics first uncovered more than 200 years ago by Thomas Malthus.

Throughout, Matthews and Boltz appeal to humanity’s ability to innovated its way out of a tight spot, and admittedly it has often done so before. But do the negotiators at the global gabfests have any appreciation of how tight that spot is today? Clearly not, if we judge by actions rather than intentions.

Matthews and Boltz conclude:

Our intuition is that fear has proven to be a far less helpful means of communicating the need for positive change than hope.

They may well be correct in their intuition; we humans are enormously adept at ignoring little local difficulties. But is an “intuition” about “hope” really the best they can do?

Burger et al. offer an interesting way of looking at sustainability: the military siege, which attempted to block flows into and out of cities and castles, often successfully.

From this point of view and in the short term of days to months, some farms and ranches would be reasonably sustainable, but the residents of a large city or an apartment building would rapidly succumb to thirst, starvation, or disease.

How I’d like to lay siege to a gathering of global negotiators.