Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021

Smallholders still produce a lot of food

Hannah Ritchie of the indispensable Our World in Data has just come out with a useful summary of the data on how much food small and family farms produce. And one of the main points she makes is that those are two very different things. The bottom line is that smallholders (those farming 2 ha or less) account for 29% of the world’s agricultural production, at least as far as kilocalories are concerned ((Somebody may have done micronutrients, I’ll have to check.)), and family farms produce about 70-80%.

As rightly pointed out by Dr Ritchie, FAO has in the past said that small-scale farmers produce up to 70% of the world’s crops, a statistic that has been widely repeated. This is clearly wrong. However, to be fair to FAO, they have recently walked that back a bit, and their latest headline number is about a third. Which is still quite a lot really, and don’t forget that there are other things that small farms are good at.

August 11, 2021August 11, 2021

Going wild among the nuraghe

Ever since I was a kid I’ve wanted to visit the Sardinian Bronze Age megalithic edifices known as nuraghe. Finally managed it last week. Very exciting. And what should I find at Lu Brandali?

Yes, you guessed it: a crop wild relative.

Day made.

August 2, 2021August 11, 2021

Brainfood: Bambara groundnut, Germination prion, Future foods, Hotspots, Soybean expansion, Remote sensing, Micronutrients, Madagascar food security, Aromatic maize, Sunflower oil, Grasspea, ICARDA lentils, Australian wild rice

Bambara Groundnut (Vigna subterranea [L.] Verdc.) Production, Utilisation and Genetic Improvement in Sub-Saharan Africa. Needs breeding for better yield and nutritional value, and there’s plenty of diversity to work with.
A prion-like protein regulator of seed germination undergoes hydration-dependent phase separation. And variation may be linked to ecological adaptation, and so could be used in breeding for drought tolerance. Possibly even in Bambara groundnut?
Future foods for risk-resilient diets. Yeah, microalgae, mycoprotein and mealworm, what could possibly go wrong? I almost prefer the prion.
Hotspots of land-use change in global biodiversity hotspots. Agricultural expansion is the main threat in the Global South, urbanization in the North. Bring on the microalgae.
Massive soybean expansion in South America since 2000 and implications for conservation. A lot of it happens on pastures, but not all, and those cows have to go somewhere.
Remote sensing of biodiversity: what to measure and monitor from space to species? How the above was done. Still waiting for my landrace erosion early warning system.
Priority micronutrient density in foods. Organs, small fish, dark green leafy vegetables, shellfish, beef, goat, eggs, milk, cheese, and canned fish with bones. What, no microalgae?
Food insecurity related to agricultural practices and household characteristics in rural communities of northeast Madagascar. Diversification is needed. Have they thought of microalgae?
Creation of aromatic maize by CRISPR/Cas. Because it’s there? Since you’re at it, why not aromatic microalgae?
Genotyping and lipid profiling of 601 cultivated sunflower lines reveals novel genetic determinants of oil fatty acid content. Analysis of lots of Russian material identifies interesting genomic regions. Hold the microalgae.
Study of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice in Participants with Regular Intake of Lathyrus, But No Spastic Paraparesis. Neurolathyrism is not a problem even where grasspea is a major crop.
Genetic diversity and GWAS of agronomic traits using an ICARDA lentil (Lens culinaris Medik.) Reference Plus collection. Who needs grasspea, though, eh, when you have lentils?
Starch structure-property relations in Australian wild rices compared to domesticated rices. Good, and good for you. Keep your microalgae.

July 26, 2021July 26, 2021

Brainfood: Genetic diversity, Germplasm exchange, Genomic selection, New varieties, Maya agriculture, AnGR, Diverse planted forests, Vermont seeds, Wine appellation, Roots & tubers, Late blight, Nordic barley landraces

The long-standing significance of genetic diversity in conservation. I suppose it does need to be repeated.
Germplasm exchange is critical to conservation of biodiversity and global food security. Yes, indeed it does look like it needs to be repeated.
From gene banks to farmer’s fields: using genomic selection to identify donors for a breeding program in rice to close the yield gap on smallholder farms. A prime example of why it should not need to be repeated.
Large potential for crop production adaptation depends on available future varieties. 39% of global cropland could require new crop varieties to avoid yield loss from climate change by the end of the century? You don’t say. Bears repeating.
More than Maize, Bananas, and Coffee: The Inter– and Intraspecific Diversity of Edible Plants of the Huastec Mayan Landscape Mosaics in Mexico. Looks like we don’t need to repeat it to the Maya.
Monitoring and Progress in the Implementation of the Global Plan of Action on Animal Genetic Resources. Significant progress, but correlated with per capita GDP. So some people are listening to the endless repetition; but not enough.
For the sake of resilience and multifunctionality, let’s diversify planted forests! Yes, it needs to be repeated for forests too.
Motivations for maintaining crop diversity: Evidence from Vermont’s seed systems. Yes, repeat by all means, but with variation.
How big is the “lemons” problem? Historical evidence from French wines. Quality certification schemes can support the market value of products. And of course they can be good for genetic diversity too.
Crop resistance and household resilience – The case of cassava and sweetpotato during super-typhoon Ompong in the Philippines. Root and tuber crops are good for household resilience in typhoon-affected areas. Not exactly genetic diversity, but still bears repeating.
Global historic pandemics caused by the FAM-1 genotype of Phytophthora infestans on six continents. Why genetic diversity is necessary for root and tuber crops too. As if it needed repeating.
Genetic Diversity in 19th Century Barley (Hordeum vulgare) Reflects Differing Agricultural Practices and Seed Trade in Jämtland, Sweden. What causes all that genetic diversity we’ve been repeating endlessly about.

July 22, 2021July 22, 2021

Finding common ground on the Seed Commons

The perspective of Seed Commons challenges the dominant narrative that the best pathway towards food and nutrition security for the world’s growing population is to foster privately-owned biotechnical innovations, supported by corresponding policy measures (see, for example, OECD 2018). It addresses major political impasses in the present international and national governance of varieties, seed and PGRFA that are based on such narratives and tend to be tailored towards the needs of private sector R&D, large-scale farms and ‘industrial’ food systems, hampering the necessary transition of farming and food systems towards more sustainable outcomes (IPES-Food 2016). By exploring innovative governance models for seed, varieties and PGRFA, Seed Commons could thus provide opportunities to reconsider how innovation could be fostered in a way to better serve current and future needs of farmers and society.

Well that’s exciting. Though I’m a slightly miffed that there was a whole symposium about Seed Commons and nobody told me.

Anyway, check out in particular the paper by Halewood and co-authors, which tries to answer the question: What institutional innovations can enhance farmers’ agency in the evolving global crop commons through use of their specialized knowledge and experience?

Spoiler alert: it’s made-to-measure biocultural community protocols designed to promote farming communities’ access to crop genetic resources from elsewhere ((No doubt the risks involved in obtaining germplasm “from elsewhere” were mitigated using this handy tool.)) for experimentation, improvement and management as part of their local production systems. But not only, so read the whole thing. And the other papers too.