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Wallacean agrobiodiversity overlooked?

There was an International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar last December. Wallacea is of course one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a link between the Sahul and Sunda landmasses. I was only able to find a sketchy programme on the internet, so I don’t really know in detail what was covered. In particular, was agricultural biodiversity included in the discussions? There have been fleeting mentions of “Long-term biodiversity monitoring including that of the Anoa dwarf buffalos on Buton (Phillip Wheeler, University of Hull)” as one of the papers. 1 But what about spices, for example? Does anyone know?

Incidentally, while looking into this I came across some great pictures of the house where Wallace lived on Ternate. Another site to add to the list for our long-planned tour of the Spice Islands, Robert?

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Meta-analyzing ecological agriculture

Meta-analyze the meta-analyses on ecological agriculture and this — at least according to Lim Li Ching, a researcher at Third World Network — is what you get:

It is clear that ecological agriculture is productive and has the potential to meet food security needs, particularly in the African context. The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development concurs that an increase and strengthening of agricultural knowledge, science and technology toward agroecological sciences will contribute to addressing environmental issues while maintaining and increasing productivity (IAASTD, 2008). Moreover, ecological agricultural approaches allow farmers to improve local food production with low-cost, readily available technologies and inputs, without causing environmental damage.

Miguel Altieri thinks that small farms is where the most ecological and sustainable agriculture is predominantly taking place, and that we need to support that. He repeatedly mentions that they are havens of agrobiodiversity, but he doesn’t mention another meta-analysis that shows that small farms are diverse farms.

LATER: From Brazil, “how family farmers may have benefited benefit from the implication of large retail chains in the organic sector and how an economically and ecologically outstanding agriculture may arise from these circumstances.”

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Inter situs conservation unveiled

Following our recent exchange of views on assisted migration, Prof. Vernon Heywood has alerted me to the fact that the latest issue of BGjournal (Vol. 6, No. 1, January 2009) is devoted to ecological restoration.

Amongst the many interesting articles is one on inter situ [sic] conservation which is an issue related to assisted migration. It deals with reintroduction of species to locations outside the current range but within the recent past range of the species unlike assisted migration which deals with the introduction of species (or communities) to areas not at present within their ‘native’ ranges. Both are forms of human-aided translocation of species. On a pedantic note, the correct term for the former should be inter situs not inter situ. I suppose that assisted migration could be viewed as anticipated or predictive inter situs conservation but I would not advocate using such terms.

Another article (by Dixon & Sharrock) in the same issue is on botanic gardens and restoration and includes a Box on the potential and problems of assisted migration.

Perhaps the biggest problem with assisted migration is that while we have various bioclimatic models for predicting species’ distributions under different climates we are not really able to incorporate habitat availability or predict it independently of niche models. We need to know what the habitat and species assemblage (“ecosystem”) are likely to be in the future that we are planning to introduce species into!

It’s not online on the BCGI website yet, but it soon will be.