Hot on the heels of the Fifth Potato Festival in Peru, which we mentioned a few days ago, comes the Festival Nacional de la Agrobiodiversidad Frutos de la Tierra, also in Peru, 24-26 June. And, not to be outdone, Ecuador weighs in with the I Seminario Internacional de la Papa, also on 24 June. One has to wonder what is driving this proliferation of agricultural events in the region. And since we’re on the subject of Andean diversity, does anyone else think that some of the potato varieties illustrated by National Geographic are nothing of the sort?
Featured: Green manure
Challenged to produce an agroforestry system that actually works, Ian Dawson shows no hesitation:
Sileshi et al. from the World Agroforestry Centre did a meta-analysis of the impacts of green fertilisers on maize production in Africa. It shows benefits.
Phew!
How to buy on-farm conservation
An item on the website of Conservation Magazine describes how best to buy ecosystem services. It distinguishes “payments for action” from “payments for results”.
Farmers in Europe, it says, are paid to mow their hayfields to create habitat for birds, and get the cash regardless of how many birds use the grasslands. That’s payment for action.
In Cambodia, by contrast, villagers are paid to conserve forests, “but only if visiting birdwatchers see certain unusual species”. Payment for results.
Most current schemes to pay for ecosystem services apparently reward actions, rather than results. But which method actually delivers better results?
In general, “payment by action is favored where there is a clear action” that will clearly benefit biodiversity and is relatively easy to measure, they concluded. So paying to increase wetland habitat for birds known to frequent marshes would make sense.
In contrast, in degraded landscapes, or in places where conservationists aren’t sure which actions will bring the most benefit, it might make more sense to pay for results.
The conclusions emerge not from any kind of field study but from a theoretical model “consisting of one conservation agency, one land manager and one patch of habitat. The model assumed that the land manager wanted to maximize income from the patch. The agency, meanwhile, had a limited budget and wanted to get the biggest biodiversity boost for its buck.”
How to apply this to on-farm conservation of agricultural biodiversity? It’s complex. Research is currently going on at Bioversity and elsewhere, with some nifty approaches that, for example, allow different communities to bid for the payments, establishing a market that economist Adam Drucker says allows you to get more conservation for the same amount of money. He has also been exploring the tensions between economic efficiency and social equity; do members of the community resent some being paid more than others for the “same” conservation. A peer-reviewed journal has accepted a paper for publication; we’ll bring you news of an “easier” version of the story when we have it.
National Geographic does genebanks
This is the beguiling paradox of seeds. They are, for all their obvious significance, so readily dismissible, especially by those of us in the well-fed world, who have forgotten where our food even comes from.
Let us hope this National Geographic article helps to change things.
Tomato, black pepper and coffee
No, those aren’t the ingredients for some kind of wacky new dish. But they do offer some insights into the global realpolitik and social status of the food bizniss, past and present.
Thanks to Rachel Laudan for pointing to Lapham’s Quarterly, source of that infographic — you’ll want to click on it to see it bigger and better — and much else besides.