m g zine bout gricultur l biodiversity 2 0 0 8 · diversity aquatic life in rice 24 fields — an...

I m p r o v i n g l i v e s t h r o u g h b i o d i v e r s i t y r e s e a r c h

Geneflow� M � G � Z I N E � b o u t � G R I C u Lt u R � L b I o D I V E R S I t Y2

Feature Section: Women and agricultural biodiversity

bioversity launches global awareness campaign, Diversity for Life

Special Report: the food price crisis

Geneflow News

Diversity for Life 1

Farmers maintain 2 more crop diversity than expected, and in unexpected ways

More crop diversity 4 for farmers

The day of the big 6 freeze in Svalbard: Global Seed Vault opened

Deadly wheat rust 8 continues journey east

A new way of 9 looking at forests as cash crops

Turning up the heat 10 on the world's wildilfe

Adapting to climate 11 change

Food and tradition 12 in Nepal: a melting pot of diversity

Renaissance of a 14 neo-traditional Andean cuisine

Lazio’s agricultural 15 biodiversity heritage

Bursting with benefits: 16 students learn about the Pohnpei banana

Pulp fiction 17

A 'farm-a-ceutical' 18 approach to malaria

Regeneration: saving 20 the world one seed at a time

Joining forces for a 21 'Green Revolution' in Africa

A modern Atlantis 22

Managing pests and 23 diseases with crop diversity

Aquatic life in rice 24 fields — an essential source of food for rural Asian households

Rubber duck continent 25

Feature Section

Supporting the women 26 who protect our biodiversity

Women: guardians 27 of West Africa’s crop diversity

Nutritional security 28 and biodiversity: meet the women who strengthen the link

Turning over a new leaf 29

Storing and sharing 30 traditional knowledge using video

Women’s hidden role 31 in maintaining local potato diversity

Blurring the line 32 between farmer and breeder

One woman’s quest 33 to raise the profile of wild medicinal plants

Going local with Lois 34 Englberger in Pohnpei

Changing the 36 fundamentals: African women lead fight to cope with climate change

Seeds of wealth 37

The dreamweavers 38 of T’boli

Women's status is 39 key to improving malnutrition in India

Ecuadorian women 40 play a central role in conserving native crops

Women's traditional 42 uses for wild plants in Armenia

Forage crops ease 43 the burden of finding pig feed

Farmers abandon 44 shifting agriculture in the Western Ghats

Special Report

Agricultural 45 biodiversity: the key to solving the food crisis?

World leaders consider 47 linked problems of food, energy and climate change

Crop diversity: a tool 48 for managing the food crisis in the Pacific

India’s mango harvest 49 sours

High prices force 50 Liberians from rice to pasta diet

French escargot 51 imports slow to snail’s pace

Rubbishing (good) food 52

Going Green: 53 city gardening gets a boost

A keyhole view on 54 the food crisis

Facing the food crisis: 55 Ethiopian co-op gives hope

Food crisis hits the 56 bee world

Glossary 57

Managing EditorRuth D. Raymond

�ssistant Managing EditorCassandra Moore

InternAnn Gong

EditingScriptoria (www.scriptoria.co.uk)

DesignPatrizia Tazza

LayoutFrances Ferraiuolo

Cover PhotoWomen play a critical role in the conservation and management of agricultural biodiversity. Recognizing and supporting the role of women as guardians of diversity will help ensure that agricultural biodiversity remains available to meet major development challenges like poverty, hunger and malnutrition.Giacomo Pirozzi / Panos Pictures

ISBN 978-92-9043-784-0

Contents

Their role as caretakers for their families has enabled women to gain important

and unique knowledge about agricultural biodiversity and its uses, including valuable

information about the medicinal and nutritional properties of

local plants. Ensuring that this knowledge is kept alive

is vital for the conservation of agricultural biodiversity.

resGeneflow ’08

� M�G�ZINE �bout �GRICuLtuR�L bIoDIVERSItY

�Geneflow News

Diversity for Life

On 22 May 2008, the International Day for Biological Diversity, Bioversity launched a global campaign known as Diversity for Life. The aim of the campaign is to inspire people all over the world to use agricultural biodiversity to improve their nutrition, their livelihoods, and the health of the planet. In collaboration with national and international partners, Bioversity hopes to create a new appreciation of agricultural biodiversity as an undervalued yet vital resource. Headquartered in Rome, the campaign will have offices and activities all over the world.

“Our goal is as ambitious as it is important,” said Ruth Raymond, Head of Bioversity’s Public Awareness Unit: “to create

a vibrant global movement around agricultural biodiversity.”

Diversity for Life will establish campaign offices in key countries world wide. Country-specific campaign strategies will be developed in consultation with partners and will consist of a range of activities carried out on a continual basis and lasting at least a year. The idea is to create a constant drumbeat of key messages targeting change agents and end users.

“Only by ensuring persistent advocacy of a particular objective—getting people to diversify their diets, convincing policy-makers to support biodiversity conservation and use—can we ensure its achievement,” Raymond said.

Diversity for Life will ensure a strong presence at important meetings and conferences—national, regional and international—where it will advocate the importance of a supportive policy environment for agricultural biodiversity. Of particular importance will be the 10th Meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, which will take place in Japan in 2010.

“The next two years offer us a tremendous opportunity,”

said Emile Frison, Bioversity’s Director General. “The benefits of biodiversity for livelihoods, for nutrition, and for countering the effects of climate change and the food crisis are enormous and largely untold. We can change that”.

By Cassandra Moore, Bioversity International

“The benefits of biodiversity

for livelihoods, for nutrition, and for

countering the effects of climate

change and the food crisis are enormous and

largely untold. We can change that”

A concert by the Orchestra di Piazza Vittorio followed the campaign launch. With artists from 10 countries, each drawing on their musical traditions to create a bold new sound, the Orchestra

is proof positive of the power of diversity. Omar Lopez Valle (pictured here) is from Cuba.

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The reception following the launch of the global campaign, Diversity for Life, featured food from eight different countries.

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For more information, contact Ruth Raymond, Bioversity International r.raymond@cgiar.org

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Farmers maintain more diversity than previously thought, and they do so in distinct ways and for distinct reasons. So says a 10-year study in eight countries.

“One of the things we discovered is that a large part of crop diversity is conserved at the community level, rather than in individual farmer’s fields,” said Devra Jarvis, senior scientist at Bioversity, who coordinated the study. “Also, farmers who choose to grow traditional crop

varieties are generally growing more than one type, which is presumably a deliberate choice in favour of diversity.”

The study, which was the result of a collaborative effort between Bioversity and various researchers, development workers and farmers from national programmes around the world, collected and synthesized data from more than 2000 small farms across five continents. The results were published in the Proceedings of

the National Academy of Sciences in March.

The project team measured the so-called ‘richness’ and ‘evenness’ of the varieties that farmers grow in their fields and gardens. ‘Richness’ and ‘evenness’ are two measurements of diversity that have long been used by ecologists. ‘Richness’ refers to the number of different varieties grown. ‘Evenness’, by contrast, measures how common each variety is in the production system. If all the varieties are planted

on roughly equal areas of land, then ‘evenness’ is high, whereas if one or two varieties dominate the area planted to that crop, ‘evenness’ is low.

“The point of these measures,” said Jarvis “is that they let us compare levels of diversity of different crops in different places and across different cultures.”

The researchers studied 27 crops in 26 communities, representing about 63 600 hectares distributed across eight countries. Sites ranged from sea level, in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico, to above 3000 metres in Nepal. The environments studied included arid and semi-arid areas of Burkina Faso

Farmers maintain more crop diversity than expected, and in unexpected ways

“The results show that

despite the differences

among crops, cultures and

countries there are consistent patterns to the way diversity is

maintained on farm”

Farmers grow more diversity than expected according to a new study. Bioversity’s Devra Jarvis, pictured here (far right) with a community in Nepal, coordinated the study.

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�Geneflow News

and Morocco, temperate areas in Hungary and Nepal, tropical highlands in Ethiopia and tropical and subtropical lowlands in Mexico, Amazonian Peru and Vietnam. The farming systems were rain-fed or irrigated, stable or shifting cultivation.

Country partners used a number of criteria to decide which crops would be covered by the study. These included their importance for national food security, and whether the country was a centre of diversity for the crop. Selecting crops that also covered different crop breeding systems enabled the team to gain as complete a picture as possible of the state of diversity conserved on farm. “The results show that despite the differences among crops, cultures and countries, there are consistent patterns to the way diversity is maintained on farm,” Jarvis said.

Jarvis believes this reflects two different farmer strategies. Some crops are maintained at farm and community levels with one or two dominant varieties and a large number of other varieties that occur at lower

frequencies. This suggests that farmers maintain the low frequency varieties as insurance against future environmental changes or for social and economic reasons. Other crops have a more even frequency of distribution of traditional varieties, implying that farmers are selecting varieties to serve current needs.

Jean-Louis Pham, at the French Institute of Research for Development in Montpellier, France, paid tribute to the painstaking efforts needed to assemble so much important data. He told a reporter that the results will no doubt be widely used as a reference, “providing us with a kind of state of the world’s crop diversity at the beginning of the 21st Century.”

By Jeremy Cherfas, Bioversity International

Read the study online at www.pnas.org/

content/105/14/5326

A study spanning 10 years gathered data about crop diversity from more than 2000 small farms across five continents.

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For more information, contact Devra Jarvis, Bioversity International d.jarvis@cgiar.org

More crop diversity for farmers

The World Bank has estimated that the global food crisis could push another 100 million people into poverty. Climate change and the energy and food crises are going to hit the world’s poorest people hardest, hampering world efforts to meet the Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people suffering from poverty and hunger by 2015. Solutions need to be found.

Crop diversity could help farmers in the developing

world adapt to climate change and improve the resilience and productivity of their farming systems. But for this to happen, farmers and breeders must have access to the raw material they need to strengthen their farming systems: plant genetic resources.

At its second meeting in November 2007, the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture took several decisions that will help to ensure such

access is possible. One of the most important was its decision to extend the range of crops that the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) centres will distribute under the Standard Material Transfer Agreement (SMTA)—the legal instrument that governs the exchange of material and information under the Treaty. By taking this decision, the Governing Body has made more crop diversity readily available to farmers and breeders around the world.

The Treaty is an international agreement that seeks to create a supportive global policy environment for exchanging and accessing plant genetic resources important for food and agriculture and for ensuring the equitable sharing of benefits arising from their use.

“This is a major step,” explained Michael Halewood, head of the policy unit at Bioversity International. “Distributing crop diversity under the SMTA ensures that material and information remain freely available and subject to the benefit-sharing provisions of the Treaty.”

The CGIAR centres have been using the SMTA for transfers of Annex 1 crops (important food and forage

“Distributing crop diversity

under the SMTA ensures that material and information

remain freely available and

subject to the benefit-sharing

provisions of the Treaty”

The Governing Body of the International Treaty took several important steps during its second session, including approving the use of the SMTA by the CGIAR centres to distribute material not included in Annex 1 of the Treaty.

�Geneflow News

crops that are covered by the Multilateral System of the International Treaty) since 1 January 2007. Now they will also use it for the transfer of plant genetic resources held in the CGIAR collections that are not on Annex 1 of the Treaty but that are nevertheless important to countless small farmers in the developing world. This makes those species available on the same terms as the crops within the formal scope of the Multilateral System of the International Treaty (see box), at least as far as materials from the centres are concerned.

The CGIAR collections are among the largest in the world, containing more than 650 000 samples of crops vital for food security, including globally important staples such as wheat, rice and maize. The collections also hold samples of crop wild relatives and traditional varieties, valuable resources for helping farmers and breeders to develop new varieties that are able to withstand the effects of climate change.

Based on the success of the centres’ experiences with distributing material under the SMTA, delegates to the Governing Body meeting took the decision to extend the use of the

SMTA by centres to non-Annex 1 crops collected by the centres before the Treaty entered into force. A report tracking the latest distribution data under the SMTA showed that the centres distributed almost 100 000 samples of crops to farmers and breeders around the world in the first seven months of 2007. In the same period, they received 3988 samples of new genetic material from collections around the world, to safeguard in-trust for the global community.

A look at figures from 2004, underlines the significance of the report. In the whole of that year, centres sent out 90 504 samples and received 5033 new accessions. “The figures for the first seven months of 2007 show a clear increase in distributions,” said Gerald Moore, Honorary Fellow at Bioversity and one of the authors of the report.

Bioversity is now leading an effort to develop guidelines that will help the centres to implement the Governing Body’s decision.

the Multilateral SystemOn becoming Parties to the Treaty, countries agree to make the genetic diversity of crops on Annex 1 of the Treaty and related information available and easily accessible to users and to ensure that any benefits arising from the use of this material are shared in a fair and equitable way. For example, Parties to the Treaty agree that when a commercial product is developed using crop resources acquired from the Multilateral System, this product must be available to all for further research and breeding. If the product is not available for further research and breeding then the recipients of material from the Multilateral System agree to pay a fee into a common fund that will be used to support the conservation of crop diversity in the developing world.

The Multilateral System applies to about 64 major crops and forages—crops that together account for 80% of the world’s total food supply. The Governing Body of the Treaty, which is composed of representatives of the countries that have ratified the Treaty, has set out the conditions for accessing these resources and sharing the benefits arising from their use in a Standard Material Transfer Agreement.

Michael Halewood, Head of Bioversity’s policy unit (right), and Gerald Moore, Honorary Fellow at Bioversity, confer during the second meeting of the Governing Body of the International Treaty.

For more information, contact Michael Halewood, Bioversity International m.halewood@cgiar.org

On a cold day in February 2008, dignitaries, scientists and journalists from all over the globe gathered on a remote island in the Arctic to witness the unlocking of one of history’s most spectacular science projects: the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Dug deep into the rock of a frozen Arctic mountain on the island of Svalbard, near the North Pole, the Seed Vault will secure for centuries, or even longer, hundreds of millions of seeds representing every available crop variety conserved in the world’s genebanks today. In the event of a global

environmental disaster, the diversity conserved in this vault could be used to restart agriculture. In the meantime, it will provide a safe storage space for seeds of the world’s most important crops and protection against the loss of crop diversity.

The Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, and Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai placed the first seeds in the vault accompanied by the music of the Cameroonian artist Coco Mbassi during a spectacular opening ceremony held 130

metres down inside a frozen mountain on 26 February. Guests Jacques Diouf, the Director General of the FAO, and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, praised what they called a remarkable initiative by the Norwegian government to provide for the secure conservation of the world’s crop diversity.

The opening was a truly international event. More than 60 journalists from 13 countries made the long journey to attend the opening in freezing temperatures and to witness

the inaugural deposit of 100 million seeds originating from over 100 countries around the world.

“With climate change and other forces threatening the diversity of life that sustains our planet, Norway is proud to be playing a central role in creating a facility capable of protecting what are not just seeds, but the fundamental building blocks of human civilization,” said Norway’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg.

The Arctic island where the Seed Vault is located showcases both the effects of, and the possible response to, climate change. The glaciers are melting at Svalbard and rapid climate change is threatening the flora and fauna of the island.

the day of the big freeze in Svalbard: Global Seed Vault opened

More than 60 journalists from

13 countries made the long

journey to attend the opening

in freezing temperatures and

to witness the inaugural deposit

of 100 million seeds originating

from over 100 countries around

the world

Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust (right), watches as the first seed shipment arrives by plane at Svalbard.

�Geneflow News

Here, the Seed Vault is a unique demonstration of how international cooperation can be directed to safeguard a key component of the common heritage of humanity—a component that is fundamental for agriculture to adapt in a changing world.

In the days before the opening, more than 10 tonnes of seed samples packaged in black boxes arrived from depositing genebanks around the world. Twenty-one institutes, including international agricultural research centres of the CGIAR, national genebanks and NGOs, did a tremendous job of preparing and shipping duplicates of more than 268 000 samples in time for the grand opening (see box). The Global Crop Diversity Trust and the Nordic

Genetic Resource Centre (NordGen) coordinated the worldwide effort.

“Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population,” said Cary Fowler, Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust.

Several seed shipments from new depositor institutes have since reached the Vault (see the seed portal at www.nordgen.org/sgsv for the latest status). The Seed Vault was created in the context of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, which encourages countries to cooperate in promoting the development of an efficient and sustainable system for ex situ conservation. The partners in the project, the Norwegian Ministry of Food and Agriculture, NordGen and the Trust are working together to make the Seed Vault a cornerstone in the emerging global ex situ conservation system.

By Ola Westengen, Nordic Genetic Resource Centre

For more information, contact Ola Westengen ola.westengen@nordgen.org

Geoff Hawtin, Director General of CIAT (left), and Daniel Debouck (middle) watch as the seed shipment is loaded onto the van, Colombia.

The opening ceremony of the Svalbard Seed Vault included the inaugural deposition of 100 million seeds originating from more than 100 countries. This mass shipment of seeds involved a huge effort by the centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). Geneflow spoke to Daniel Debouck of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), in Colombia, about sending the first shipment of seeds to Svalbard.

“When Cary Fowler of the Trust informed us about the likely opening of the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard in early 2008, I don’t think we fully realized the magnitude of the project we were about to take on. But we knew one thing for certain: we had to ship duplicates of our seed collections of important beans and forages.

“It was going to be a challenging task. Never before had we organized a shipment of this size to such a remote location.

“So, from July 2007 high feelings were the order of the day as we worked on inventories and checked the viability and health of the thousands of accessions we were going to send to the Global Seed Vault. We packed and sealed hundreds and hundreds of pouches of seeds, getting our shipment ready for the big voyage.

“In order to make sure that the shipment would be cleared by the police and customs in Bogotá, we had to provide a full inventory of each box (93 in total). We almost wore down our printer doing this because the final number of accessions was 30 911, or about 52% of what we conserve in trust for humanity. We fixed aluminium plates to the boxes engraved with letters and figures. And to secure the plates to the plastic boxes, we had to ask staff members to bring in any drills they had at home!

“When all the boxes were ready, we checked with the carrier on the best way to handle them and decided they should be piled on wooden pallets. The wooden pallets would have to be approved by the quarantine office so on the Saturday prior to the shipment we went about purchasing the wood and building the pallet bases in order to have them treated in a steam pressure oven on the Sunday prior to shipment. When the carrier gave us the final calculation of weight—over 1600 kg—they also told us that the plane for the trip between Cali and Bogotá could take only 700 kg.

“Because I did not want the shipment to be split, I decided to have it all transported by land for the first part of the journey. The shipment went in a regular van, and arrived safely the next day in Bogotá. It was on a plane by the end of the afternoon. The final journey to Oslo was an interesting one: we were checking the website of the carrier every morning eager to find out about the fate of our shipment. At first, it seemed the pilots were stopping at each and every Caribbean island on the map and during the final leg of the journey we were sure that because of Saint Valentine’s day they would stop in Brussels to pick up some Belgian chocolates! Eventually, however, our Norwegian colleague Ola told us the great news that the CIAT shipment for Svalbard had arrived one day ahead of schedule. Not too bad for an exciting international adventure that was not formally planned!”

Deadly wheat rust continues journey east

Farmers in Pakistan breathed a sigh of relief when trials conducted earlier this year revealed no sign of Ug99—a highly virulent form of wheat stem rust—in their fields. For now, the wheat harvest would be safe. But it is only a matter of time, scientists warn, before spores of the fungus are carried by the wind from Iran into India and Pakistan, wiping out wheat harvests and destroying the livelihoods of countless farmers in the process. India and Pakistan account for around 20% of the world´s annual wheat production.

In January, scientists were alarmed to find that Ug99 had travelled vast distances much more quickly than predicted, jumping from Yemen to Iran and thereby exposing the whole of the northern Middle East, Afghanistan, India and Pakistan to the devastating disease (see Geneflow 2007,‘A race against time: deadly wheat disease spreads east’, p. 14).

According to Jim Peterson, wheat breeder at Oregon State University and chair of the National Wheat Improvement Committee in the US, forecasting the movement of the new rust is difficult: “CIMMYT [the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center] has done a tremendous job of predicting movement based on wind flow. But one event can throw everything off,” he explained.

But there is good news in the battle against Ug99. In June of this year, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that the first wheat lines incorporating genes for resistance to Ug99 were ready to be released. Over the last three years, USDA and CIMMYT, in collaboration with other partners in the Global Rust Initiative, have been scouring

the world’s genebanks for varieties with resistance to the disease.

More than 30 000 wheat accessions have been screened, enabling scientists to identify resistant cultivars and new sources of resistance, which they will use to develop wheat lines resistant to the disease. The search also revealed that Ug99 had overcome many more resistance genes than scientists had previously thought. With Ug99 continuing to spread over vast distances at a rapid rate, the threat is clearly far from over.

“With food prices soaring throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, and shortages threatening hunger and political chaos, the time could not be worse for an epidemic of stem rust in the world’s wheat crops,” wrote Norman Borlaug, in an op-ed published in the New York Times in April 2008. Borlaug, father of the Green Revolution and a Nobel Laureate, reprimanded the Bush administration for its plans to cut financial support for agricultural research, which would include ending its support to the CGIAR centres and other research organizations involved in wheat research. “This shocking short-sightedness goes against the interests

not only of American wheat farmers and consumers but of all humanity” wrote Borlaug. “It is tantamount to the United States abandoning its pledge to help halve world hunger by 2015.” Cutting in half the number of people who suffer from hunger and poverty by 2015 is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals that governments around the world, including that of the United States, have set themselves.

Fortunately, in July 2008 the US showed signs of renewed commitment to agricultural research when it announced a sum of US$20 million for 2009 to support science and technology aimed at increasing the productivity of food staples.

In the meantime, farmers around the world continue to watch their harvests with bated breath as Ug99 continues its seemingly unrelenting spread across the globe.

Adapted from ‘Potentially devastating wheat rust spreads’, by

David Bennett, Delta Farm Press, 10 June 2008 and

‘Stem rust never sleeps’, by Norman Borlaug, New York

Times, 26 April 2008

“With food prices soaring

throughout Asia, Africa and

Latin America, and shortages

threatening hunger and

political chaos, the time could

not be worse for an epidemic of

stem rust in the world’s wheat

crops”

The tell-tale brown spots of stem rust on a wheat plant. Ug99 could cause losses worth billions of dollars to wheat farmers around the world.

�Geneflow News

As far as the developing world

is concerned, rainforests

have, ironically, become more

valuable to the international

community than to the locals

� new way of looking at forests as cash crops

With climate change at the forefront of public concern, the world is keeping a sharp eye on its forests. Not only do they mitigate carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, forests are also rich in biodiversity, one of the world’s most valuable natural assets, as well as being providers of important ecosystem services.

A study released by scientists at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007 asserts that compensating farmers for preserving carbon-rich landscapes such as tropical rainforests will mitigate climate change, deforestation and poverty. According to the study, crops planted at the expense of forests yield less than US$5 for each tonne of carbon–dioxide-equivalent released, while the European market for carbon credits is currently paying US$33 per tonne. Unfortunately, since the market lacks a sure-fire system for compensating farmers, it is currently more economically beneficial for farmers to clear forests than to keep them. As far as the developing world is concerned, rainforests are, ironically, more valuable to the international community than to the locals.

Economists and researchers worldwide are also beginning to realize that

rainforests and the services they provide may not be as valuable to local people as had previously been thought. A study by Ricardo Godoy, an anthropologist at Brandeis University, shows that an annual harvest of fruit, fish, wild game, medicinal plants, firewood and construction materials from a hectare of rainforest yielded only about US$20 in profit. According to Godoy, rural people clear forests because of their ‘nearly worthless’ value. “If the forest produced high economic value to these people they would not be poor,” said Godoy. This implies that the international community must take responsibility for protecting the world’s forests by compensating rural people for putting aside the axe.

A new initiative launched at the Bali conference known as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) is looking to do just that. Two different strategies are being proposed under the scheme. One would involve direct cash payments through conventional aid programmes in return for efforts by developing countries to reduce deforestation rates. The grants would be invested in clean-energy and anti-

pollution projects. The second strategy would encourage countries to earn carbon credits by reducing deforestation so that they can sell them directly into the global carbon market.

Today, almost one-fifth of global carbon emissions come from deforestation. According to the 2007 Stern Report on the economics of climate change, preventing

forest loss is the cheapest method of limiting carbon dioxide emissions. All it takes is for the global community to step up and pay for its forests.

By Ann Gong, Bioversity International

Based on ‘Do trees grow on money?’ by Fred Pearce, Conservation Magazine,

Vol. 9, No. 2, April–June 2008.

Compensating local communities financially for conserving rainforests is one of the strategies being proposed by REDD.

�0Geneflow News ��

turning up the heat on the world’s wildlife

In 2006, the world watched in shock as the media reported the first cases of polar bear cannibalism. As a result of melting sea ice in the Southern Beaufort Sea, polar bears were finding it increasingly difficult to hunt, forcing them to prey on each other. Two years later, a new study confirms that climate change can explain this and other disruptions in the habitats and behaviour of wild animals around the world.

“Humans are influencing climate through increasing greenhouse gas emissions, and the warming world is causing impacts on physical and biological systems attributable at the global scale,” said the lead author of the study, Cynthia Rosenzweig, a scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia Center for Climate Systems Research. The study was published in May in the journal Nature and involved researchers from 10 institutions around the world, including members of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Scientists scoured data from thousands of reports dating back to the 1970s and concluded that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world can be attributed to rising temperatures driven by human activity.

To reach this conclusion, the team analyzed the changing populations and behaviours of 28 800 animal and plant species as well as environmental changes such as surging rivers, retreating glaciers and shifting forests, across seven continents. The team was able to see how a change in one part of the environment might have had an impact elsewhere.

To determine whether global warming played a role in these changes, the team then checked historical records to see what effect natural variations in local climate, deforestation and changes in land use might have on ecosystems and the species that inhabit them. In 90% of the cases, the shifts in wildlife behaviour and populations could only be explained by global warming, while 95% of environmental changes, such as retreating glaciers, were consistent with rising temperatures.

According to the study, phenomena such as big drops in the populations of Antarctic penguins, fewer

fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all the result of global warming.

“We are getting a sense that climate change is already changing the way the world works,” said Rosenzweig. “When you look at a map of the world and see where changes are already happening, and how many species and systems are already responding to climate change after only a 0.6 degree rise, it heightens our concerns for the future. It’s clear we have to adapt to climate change as well as try to mitigate it.” In its latest report, the IPCC estimated that by the end of the century temperatures are likely to have risen between 2 and 6°C.

Nowhere is the importance of adaptation more evident than in agriculture, where the changes brought by climate change are threatening the livelihoods of countless farmers in the developed and the developing world alike. According to the latest report by the IPCC, up to 250 million Africans may be left short of water by 2020, while access to sufficient

food will be compromised as a result of climate change.

Developing crop varieties that can withstand high temperatures or that are drought tolerant could help farmers deal with the effects of climate change, allowing them to continue growing their crops even as conditions get harsher. But much of the diversity of plants and animals that will be needed to create new varieties and breeds that are adapted to hotter, colder and wetter conditions is itself threatened by climate change. Scientists at Bioversity International, using computer modelling to predict the impact of climate change on the wild relatives of staple crops, found that, in the next 50 years, as many as 61% of the wild peanuts studied and 12% of the potato species investigated are likely to become extinct as a result of climate change (see also ‘Adapting to climate change’, p. 11).

Based on ‘World’s wildlife and environment already hit

by climate change, major study shows’, by Ian Sample, The Guardian, 15 May 2008.

In 90% of the cases, the

shifts in wildlife behaviour and

populations could only be explained by

global warming, while 95% of

environmental changes, such

as retreating glaciers, were

consistent with rising

temperatures

Melting sea ice, caused by climate change, is making it increasingly hard for polar bears to hunt, forcing them to prey on each other.

James Richey/istock photo

the victims of changing climates The population of krill, a small crustacean that is a major food for penguins, seals and whales, has fallen by 80% in 25 years, posing a major threat to the Antarctic food chain.

A study by Bioversity of 43 of the world’s most important food crops has found that more than half will lose land suitable for their cultivation by 2055 as a result of climate change.

In its 2007 report, the IPCC stated that around 20 to 30% of the plant and animal species assessed were likely to be at increased risk of extinction if global average temperatures rise by more than 1.5 to 2.5°C over current levels.

��Geneflow News

A new study shows that climate change will have an impact on what we grow and where we grow it. For those living in the more vulnerable regions of the world, the consequences could be dire.

Andy Jarvis and Annie Lane, scientists at Bioversity International, used computer models to predict the impact that climate change will have on the cultivation of the world’s most important staple and cash crops.

The prognosis is bleak. By 2055, more than half of the 43 crops studied—including cereals such as wheat, rye and oats—will lose land suitable for their cultivation. This loss will be disproportionately large in sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean, regions of the world that have the least capacity to cope. On the other hand, Europe and North America—regions best equipped to manage the impact of climate change—are predicted to experience the largest gains in land suitable for cultivation as crop suitability shifts northwards with rising temperatures.

The results of the study are based on the ‘business-as-usual’ climate model of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which assumes that economic growth and

greenhouse gas emissions will continue as they are at present.

Overall, the area suitable for crop cultivation is projected to increase. For example, the model predicts increases in the area of land suited to pearl millet (31%), sunflower (18%), common millet (16%), chickpea (15%) and soya

bean (14%). The problem is that many of the gains occur in regions where these crops are not currently important for food security. “We predict an increase of more than 10% in the area suitable for pearl millet in Europe and the Caribbean, where hardly anyone eats the crop, but not in Africa, where pearl millet is widely cultivated. That’s the problem,” Jarvis explained.

The results of the study support the recent call by the IPCC to invest in solutions that will allow countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change. It will be crucial, for example, to develop new varieties of crops with resistance to a range of stresses, such as greater tolerance of drought, flooding and extreme temperatures.

Such new varieties would allow cultivation to continue in areas that would otherwise become unsuitable for a particular crop, as well as allowing the crop to be grown in new and previously inhospitable areas.

The traits that will be needed to develop those new varieties are likely to come from traditional crop varieties and wild relatives. But

another study by Lane and Jarvis shows that these very resources may themselves be under threat from climate change (see Geneflow 2007, ‘Climate change threatens wild relatives of key crops’, p. 21) “We need to ensure that crop wild relatives and traditional varieties are conserved,” wrote Lane and Jarvis. Without them, it will

become increasingly difficult for farmers to meet the growing demand for food in the face of a changing and unpredictable climate.

�dapting to climate change

“We predict an increase of more

than 10% in the area suitable for

pearl millet in Europe and the

Caribbean, where hardly anyone eats the crop,

but not in Africa, where pearl

millet is widely cultivated. That’s

the problem”

ity In

Changes in suitability averaged over all crops predicted by the HadCM3 climate change model. Places shown in red become less suitable, while those in blue become more suitable.

For more information, contact Andy Jarvis,Bioversity Internationala.jarvis@cgiar.org

��Geneflow News ��

Food and tradition in Nepal: a melting pot of diversity

Situated in the lap of the Himalayas, Nepal features at least eight climatic zones, from tropical to alpine, with varying soil fertility levels, making the country a hotspot for agricultural biodiversity. The people are similarly diverse, including more than 40 different ethnic groups, each with their separate customs and traditions, including many related to food.

In fact, Nepal can be divided roughly into three geographical areas: the mountain, the hill, and the plain regions. Traditional Nepalese cuisine is a composite of the culinary traditions of these diverse landscapes and is based on local biodiversity. Dishes from the mountain region include, for example, spicy bamboo shoot and cowpea-based soups served with rice and dishes

based on yak (a major source of protein for the Nepalese), including a traditional yak blood drink that even city dwellers will pay high prices for. The yaks themselves are generally kept in rich alpine pastures full of Himalayan herbs, medicinal plants and highly valued mushrooms and yarshagumba (another type of fungus that’s used to make tonics and is considered an aphrodisiac).

Tharu women dressed in their traditional clothes pose for a photograph during a food diversity fair in Western Nepal.

Unfortunately, as in so many other places,

local and ethnic food varieties

are beginning to disappear from

Nepali tables

��Geneflow News

The wide range of traditional foods eaten in other areas of Nepal include those associated with the hill region, such as buffalo and goat, vegetables, legumes, black soya bean and spinach (which people grow in home gardens). Traditional hill dishes include pulse soup (dal) and rice (bhat), which are commonly eaten with pickles and a variety of meats and vegetables.

In the southern lowland plains, rice is grown in large quantities and sometimes harvested twice a year. These areas also produce a wide range of vegetables (including broad leaf mustard and radish, for example), fruits, local fish from rivers and ponds and wild meat.

So what has kept diets (and crops) so diverse in Nepal? One major reason is the fact that specific foods are required for use in traditional ceremonies and rituals. As a result, custom has required the Nepalese to maintain a wide variety of fruits and plants in their home gardens for use at festivals such as Dasain—Nepal’s biggest religious festival.

Celebrated during the month of Kartik (late September to early October), Dasain commemorates the victory

of the gods over wicked demons. During the festival it is traditional to eat meat from mountain goats with a mixture of medicinal plants. This dish is considered extremely healthy, and the Nepalese pay high prices for it. Another example is Tihar (the New Year Festival of Lights celebration), which features a variety of dishes containing more than 20

plant species and five types of animal product.

Unfortunately, as in so many other places, local and ethnic foods are beginning to disappear from Nepali tables. Agricultural development is reducing the diversity of Nepalese diets by shifting the focus from nutritious traditional foods to commercial

crops. Lack of supportive policies, combined with a lack of awareness about the nutritious value of local foods, are causing the local foods to disappear. With global food prices rising, the need for self-reliant food production is greater than ever before.

By Bhuwon Sthapit and Ambika Thapa,

Bioversity International

Nepalese cuisine is as varied as its people. This traditional meal of buckwheat bread and curry made from leafy vegetables and wild mushrooms is typical of the high altitude valleys of Jumla.

B. Sthapit/Bioversity International

For more information, contact Bhuwon Sthapit b.sthapit@cgiar.org

Renaissance of a neo-traditional �ndean cuisine

The Andes, the world’s largest mountain range, extends over 7000 km from Punta Gallinas in Colombia to Cape Froward in Chile. Nestled among the mountains are highland plateaus, mid-altitude valleys and foothills, where important plant species, including the potato, were domesticated over 7000 years ago.

The earliest farming communities in South America emerged on the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of northern South America, where settlers began by cultivating a few crops such as maize and cassava.

At the beginning of the Formative period (ca. 1800 BC), agricultural production intensified, prompting coastal settlers to extend the agricultural area to the Andean highlands. But the crops they had been cultivating on the coast, such as maize, beans and

squashes, could not adapt to the some of the frost-prone regions of the high Andes, particularly the central Andes. Fortunately, a different group of plant species, well adapted to the harsh conditions, was domesticated in this region, the most important being the potato and quinoa, a traditional Andean grain.

Among the plants that played a role in the development of the first high Andean cultures were bitter potatoes, oca, mashua, arracacha and maca. Grains such as quinoa, cañiwa and kiwicha were important due to their high protein content. Complementing this group was tarwi, a high-altitude-tolerant legume.

The main highland societies of pre-Hispanic South America, such as the Tiwanaku and Wari, controlled the lower Andean valleys and traded actively with other lowland groups for food and products not cultivated in the region, such as cotton and a variety of fruits.

When the Spanish conquerors invaded the Andean region, they found well-organized agricultural societies, such as the Inca and Muisca that spanned most of the Andean region from central Chile to central

Colombia. Following the conquest, most of the adapted high Andean crops were rapidly replaced by foreign plant species including wheat, barley, rye and lentils. Exotic animal products, such as beef, chicken and pork were also introduced to the New World’s diet. Despite the incursion of foreign foods, the rich biodiversity of the Andes has been preserved by the rural communities that still work the land using pre-Hispanic agricultural technologies.

Today a renaissance of the ancient cuisine in South America is being led by young, enterprising restaurateurs as a sort of neo-Andean cuisine. Stuffed rocoto chili peppers, quinoa desserts, alpaca meat and chicha morada, a beverage made of purple maize, are some of the dishes offered in

elegant restaurants in Lima, Bogotá and even in Madrid and Paris. The Peruvian dish, pachamanca, epitomizes the combined ancestry of modern Andean cuisine. Beef, pork, chicken, mutton, potatoes, sweet potato, broad bean and maize are wrapped in leaves or placed in a clay pot, buried over hot stones and covered with soil until fully cooked. The meal honours Pachamama (Mother Earth) for the food obtained from her soil.

Fused with the food crops of the Old World, the traditional crops of the Andes live on in the new dishes promoted by trendy and innovative chefs.

By Francisco J. Morales, International Center for

Tropical Agriculture (CIAT)

For more information, contact Francisco Morales f.morales@cgiar.org

Engravings of potatoes adorn a vase from the Chimu period (1000

AD to 1470 AD). F. M

Today a renaissance

of the ancient cuisine in South

America is being led by young, enterprising

restaurateurs as a sort of neo-Andean cuisine

At Gastrotur, a catering school in the centre of Lima, Peru, chefs are taught how to prepare delicious and avant-garde dishes using traditional Peruvian foods.

��

Lazio’s agricultural biodiversity heritage

From the rolling hills of Tuscany to the green valleys of Lazio, Italy’s varied landscapes are home to a rich diversity of plants and animals. Much of this diversity has developed under human influence, as farmers worked the fertile land around them to produce top wines and fragrant olive oils, products that have made Italy famous around the world.

The Lazio region, which is home to Rome, is located in the centre of the Italian peninsula and is widely recognized by scientists and researchers to be the richest region in Italy in terms of biodiversity. Old paintings depicting the Roman countryside are testament to the long-standing links between local culture and traditions and the presence of native plant and animal breeds.

In March 2000, in response to calls by the Convention on Biodiversity, the region of Lazio issued a law to ensure the protection of plant and animal resources native to the region. Despite their cultural and historical importance, many of the region’s native breeds and plant varieties are threatened with genetic erosion as farmers increasingly replace them with modern breeds and varieties that are more productive, such as the apple variety ‘Fuji Kiku’, the peach variety ‘Red Moon’ and the Saanen breed of goat.

Lawmakers have entrusted ARSIAL (the Regional Agency for Agricultural Development and Innovation in Lazio) with managing the protection of the region’s valuable native resources and have put a number of tools at its disposal to do this. One of these is the Regional Voluntary Register.

The Regional Voluntary Register encourages local farmers to register any traditional animal breeds or landraces they grow and conserve. In return, these farmers become eligible for funds from the region to support their conservation efforts.

For the past several years, ARSIAL has been carrying out a census

of all the vegetable and animal resources in the region that are threatened with extinction and that are therefore a priority for conservation. In the course of this work, ARSIAL researchers have met pioneering farmers who continue to maintain traditional agricultural systems and to safeguard traditional plant varieties and animal breeds.

One such farmer is Biagio de Luca, who comes from the Province of Latina, between the neighbouring towns of Monte San Biagio and Fondi. He and his two sons continue to breed a special type of local white goat known as the Capra Bianca Monticellana. The gut of this goat has long been used to create a traditional form of wind instrument known as the zampogna which is typical of the region. The milk of the animal is used to prepare a tasty local cheese called Marzolina.

ARSIAL’s researchers are working with de Luca and

others like him to ensure their conservation efforts are supported. Helping local farmers to register their products under the PDO (Protected Designation of Origin) certificate of the European Union is another one of ARSIAL’s responsibilities. The PDO label certifies the authenticity and quality of regional foods and products.

Through these and other initiatives, ARSIAL will continue to work with local farmers to ensure that Italy’s rich biodiversity is conserved and to create incentives to encourage younger generations of farmers to do the same. It is after all, this rich diversity that has made Italy famous around the world for its food.

By Paola Cirioni and Massimo Tanca, ARSIAL

For more information, contact Paola Cirioni p.cirioni@arsial.it or visit the website, at www.arsial.it

ARSIAL researchers have

met pioneering farmers who

continue to maintain traditional

agricultural systems and to safeguard

traditional plant varieties and

animal breeds

Biagio de Luca (right) with his herd of White Monticellana goats. ARSIAL is working with local farmers to ensure that Italy’s rich heritage of agricultural biodiversity is conserved.

A herd of White Monticellana goats.

Geneflow News

bursting with benefits: students learn about the Pohnpei banana

A group of high school students from Pohnpei, in the Federated States of Micronesia, is educating young people about the benefits of healthy eating. Led by the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, the 30 students have talked to about 350 elementary school students from three different schools since 2007.

The initiative started with a summer school class on island foods that was

sponsored by the Island Food Community, in conjunction with the Pohnpei Upward Bound programme. The class inspired some of the students to share what they had learned about local island foods, focusing especially on the diversity of Pohnpei bananas.

There are over 50 varieties of bananas in Pohnpei. However, some of the more traditional varieties, although highly valued

in the past, have been neglected in recent years, and are becoming ever more scarce. These include ‘Karat’, the state banana of Pohnpei, and others such as ‘Utin lap’, ‘Mangat’, ‘Ihpali’ and ‘Daiwang’. All of these varieties are rich in beta-carotene, the most important of the provitamin A carotenoids which help protect against anaemia and vitamin A deficiency. Foods rich in carotenoids may also help protect against cancer, heart disease and diabetes, all of which have become serious health problems in Pohnpei.

Dressed in yellow ‘Let’s Go Local’ t-shirts, the high school students teach younger children about the benefits of orange and yellow-fleshed bananas. Banana varieties with orange or yellow flesh are extra rich in provitamin A and other carotenoids. The students point out that even white-fleshed bananas contain

some carotenoids; in contrast, rice, an imported food that has evolved into a daily staple, contains none.

Bananas are also rich in tryptophan, which the body processes into the mood-enhancing substance, serotonin, which elicits feelings of happiness. The students enjoy passing on their ‘Good Mood Food’ message: “Be happy…eat a banana!”

Samples of rare varieties are sometimes awarded to the elementary students who can correctly name the varieties and demonstrate they have retained the information they have been taught.

“The students like being quizzed on what they learned,” said the ‘Let’s Go Local’ High School Club Vice President, Ryan Yamada, at the end of a session at the Nett Elementary School. “They were really happy today with the class.”

By Lois Englberger, Island Food Community

of Pohnpei

Dressed in yellow ‘Let’s Go Local’

t-shirts, the high school students

teach younger children about

the benefits of orange and yellow-fleshed

bananas

For more information, contact nutrition@mail.fm

Yellow- and orange- fleshed bananas on display at a local school in Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.K

High school students teach their younger counterparts about the nutritional benefits of local bananas.

��

Pulp fiction

Most researchers believe banana domestication began when people first noticed the fleshy fruits and started to propagate the plants. Jean Kennedy, an archaeologist at the Australian National University in Canberra, supports another version of history. She agrees with an idea expressed long ago by the Berkeley geographer, Carl Sauer. He thought that people in the Old World tropics began to use many parts of tropical plants for medicine, fibre and dyestuff long before the familiar tropical crops, including bananas, were domesticated.

Bananas belong to the genus Musa and are native to the tropical and subtropical forests that extend from India to the Pacific where they tend to grow in natural openings in the forest. It may be hard to imagine now, but the banana started out as a seedy fruit that today’s consumers would consider quite unpalatable. The earliest evidence of bananas being cultivated for their fruit comes from Papua New Guinea and dates back only 7000 years. Humans, however, have coexisted with Musa for over 60 000 years. “Their niches must have overlapped substantially,” said Kennedy. “These striking plants are too conspicuous to have been overlooked.”

Kennedy emphasises the multiple uses the different parts of the plant have

been put to over time, including their use as food. For example, the false stem, so-called because it consists of tightly overlaid leaf sheaths, and the corm of certain species have been eaten as vegetables, as has the terminal flower bud. Seedy fruits are eaten whole with the seeds sieved out or sometimes, with the fruit cooked, seeds and all. The leaves and bracts can be used as plates and wrapping material, while people also extract useful fibre from the false stem and petiole of many banana species. Two species in particular, Musa textilis and Musa balbisiana, are cultivated especially for fibre production.

Musa textilis, a domesticated species of uncertain, possibly hybrid, parentage produces the fibre known as Manila hemp, or abaca (see related story, p. 38), which was until recently a major source of industrial rope, and which is still a source of fibre for handicraft products and clothing. And in Okinawa the traditional cultivation of Musa balbisiana for the domestic production of fibre for clothing has been revived and now supports a thriving craft industry. This produces material for kimonos that in metropolitan Japan can fetch as much as US$20 000. Parts of many species of banana are also used as medicine and in rituals.

Shifting the focus from the fruit to the plant as the first target of domestication makes it is easier to explain oddities in the distribution of certain species. For instance, M. balbisiana covers the northern part of the genus’ range but populations are also found in the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, as well as in Sri Lanka, where carbonised seeds from the late Pleistocene constitute the oldest known archaeological remains of Musa in association with humans. Banana specialists reflecting on the presence of M. balbisiana so far south conclude that it was introduced by humans, but they usually stop short of referring to these plants as domesticated since they produce seeds. Virtually all of the bananas we eat today have seedless fruits.

Whether or not it was an ‘arranged marriage’, it is in that corner of the world that M. balbisiana most likely crossbred with another parent of cultivated bananas, Musa acuminata. This encounter produced hybrids that were

taken further afield to Africa and Polynesia, where they diversified into African and Pacific plantains. The exact timing of these events remains in question, but they could have taken place as far back as 4000 years ago. According to the archaeobotanist Luc Vrydaghs, the only comparable phenomenon of ancient crop dispersal is the diffusion of wheat from the Fertile Crescent.

Consumers in banana-importing countries may assume that the banana only became valuable when people discovered its value as a delicious fruit. But people in the tropics knew the value of nurturing banana plants long before the fruit showed any sign of being as tasty as a modern banana. This is not to say that the fruit should not be given its due. It is, after all, the fruit that provoked the diversity we see in banana today, and which millions of people not only enjoy but also rely on for their livelihoods.

By Anne Vézina, Bioversity International

People in the tropics have

long appreciated the value of

nurturing banana plants even

before the fruit showed any sign of being as tasty

as a modern banana

Kimonos made of banana (Musa balbisiana) fibre can fetch as much as US$20 000. Maezato village, Ishigaki island, Okinawa, Japan.

For more information, contact Anne Vézina a.vezina@cgiar.org

Geneflow News

� ‘farm-a-ceutical’ approach to malaria

A distant relative of the daisy may soon provide an effective malaria treatment, benefiting millions of Africa’s rural poor. The treatment is derived from the leaves of the Chinese wormwood, a small tree known to researchers as Artemisia annua. In China, Artemisia has been used to treat fevers for more than a thousand years.

Artemisinin—the active ingredient from Artemesia—can be taken in tablet form (the World Health Organization has approved

the use of artemisinin-based drugs such as Coartem®) or in the more traditional form of an herbal tea. In tea form, the recommended dose is about three teaspoons taken daily for seven days. After this time, the patient should start to feel better as the parasite responsible for causing malaria is cleared from the patient’s blood.

Most varieties of Artemisia are not well-adapted to tropical conditions. However, scientists at the World Agroforestry Centre

(ICRAF) in Kenya have learned how to produce a hybrid known as A-3 in large quantities for distribution to farmers and traditional healers.

Scientists introduced the A-3 hybrid in southern Africa in 2000 in partnership with Anamed (Action for Natural Medicine)—an NGO specializing in traditional medicine in the tropics—Doctors Without Borders and Mozambique’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

“In an ideal world, every African would sleep under a pesticide impregnated bed-net and have access to medical care,” said Dennis Garrity, Director General of ICRAF. “Until then, we need to recognize that only 25 million of the 130 million doses of pharmaceutical Artemisia needed to tend

to the sick worldwide are currently available.” Even if sufficient doses of pharmaceutical Artemisia existed, delivery would be a problem, particularly in many African countries where roads and transport are poor. Providing farmers with A-3 means they can grow the plant directly in plots around the home and learn how to prepare teas made from the plant for home therapy.

Experts caution that when taken in pill form, artemisinin should be combined with other drugs to prevent the malaria parasite from developing resistance to the drug. The herbal tea medication, although it may also give rise to resistance in the parasites, has advantages over existing forms of pharmaceutical artemisinin and other anti-malarial drugs. For example,

Herbal teas prepared with dried artemisia can help treat malaria and its symptoms.

�rtemisiaWhile Artemisia’s effectiveness as an anti-malarial is well known, the origin of its name is an open question. Some believe it derives from the Greek goddess of human fertility and childbirth, Artemis. Others say it was named after the wife of a Persian King Mausolus from whose tomb the word mausoleum is thought to have originated. Artemesia, who ruled for three years after her husband’s death, is said to have been an expert botanist and medical researcher.

By the 16th century, several forms of Artemisia were well-known in Europe and even mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. In ‘Romeo and Juliet’, the heroine is said to have been weaned by exposing her to the taste of ‘wormwood’, the common name for Artemisia.

��Geneflow News

once farmers start to grow the plant, it is always on hand and does not need to be purchased, as would be the case with pills.

The A-3 plant has no reported side effects, and the plant extract is believed to provide several anti-malarial benefits, including treating the symptoms associated with the disease (such as fever) as well as killing the parasite responsible for causing the disease. Its biggest advantage, however, is that it is free to those who grow it.

According to Tony Simons, ICRAF’s Deputy

Director General, with the availability of A-3 germplasm and a growing body of knowledge about the efficacy of indigenous herbal remedies, there will be ample opportunity to combine Artemisia with other anti-malarial herbal species to produce an herbal combination therapy and reduce the possibility of malaria parasites developing resistance to the treatment.

Such therapies would be targeted towards home production, home diagnosis and home treatment in rural areas and would complement initiatives to establish Artemisia plantations.

“What we plan to do is balance the conventional pharmaceutical approach with a ‘farm-a-ceutical’ one,” said Simons. To achieve that balance, ICRAF scientists have assembled large numbers of Artemisia plants and are screening them to identify high-yielding plant types.

They are also working to identify other anti-malarial species such as Enantia chlorantha, a tree that has been used for centuries as a source of anti-malarial drugs in West Africa. Its active ingredient is chloroquine, which is often used in pharmaceutical treatments for malaria.

Researchers caution, however, that Enantia is now endangered as a result of poachers who cut

down the tree to use its bark in dye as well as for its antibiotic properties. In response, scientists have developed techniques that provide farmers with large numbers of fast-growing Enantia trees, which can be reproduced from cuttings in rural nurseries.

“We’ll be working with partners to conduct safety and efficacy tests and to develop management guidelines for farmers who grow anti-malarial plants and teach them how to maintain and manage local nurseries,” Simons said.

The target is to reach 1.6 million farmers in eight pilot countries through some 2000 rural nurseries producing Artemisia plants and other anti-malarial species for distribution to traditional healers and the rural poor.

Pilot countries include Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Senegal and Uganda.

By Edward Sulzberger, World Agroforestry Centre

The female of certain species of anopheles mosquito is responsible for transmitting malaria in humans.

Providing farmers with A-3 means they can

grow the plant directly in plots

around the home and learn how

to prepare teas made from the plant for home

therapy

For more information, contact esulzberger@comcast.netor visit the website at www.worldagroforestrycentre.org/

�0Geneflow News ��

Regeneration: saving the world one seed at a time

It may not seem likely, but seeds do grow old. The cold and dry conditions of genebanks only slow down aging: they don’t entirely stop seeds from degenerating over time. Every so often, all seed samples held in genebanks need to be planted, grown out and harvested so that fresh seed can be returned to storage. This process, called ‘regeneration’, is an essential but often overlooked part of conservation.

The year 2007 saw the launch of the largest regeneration effort in history. The goal: to rescue and secure key collections of the world’s most important food crops. The Global Crop Diversity Trust is supporting the regeneration by

genebanks in 23 countries of more than 40 000 accessions identified by crop experts as ‘high priority’. This means that they are unique (not found in any other genebank) and in danger of being lost. The Trust is also asking 11 regional plant genetic resources networks to identify other unique collections that are regionally important and in need of urgent regeneration. It is hoped that this will result in the regeneration of another 30 000 accessions.

Providing equipment, supplies and labour needed to support regeneration activities will secure the vulnerable genetic resources of some 22 crops on Annex I of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for

Food and Agriculture. These crops are considered the most important for achieving global food security. Following the successful clearing of regeneration backlogs, many previously inaccessible accessions will be internationally available to users for the first time.

The regeneration work goes beyond planting seeds of plants in the field, although even this process is far from routine for some crops. It includes such activities as ensuring that all the plant material is properly characterized and documented, that duplicates are stored in other genebanks for safety and international distribution, and that samples are deposited in the Svalbard Global Seed

Vault for safekeeping (see related article, p.6). For vegetatively propagated crops (plants that can only be multiplied by cuttings, rather than by seeds, such as cassava), especially where international movement is involved, the process can also include bringing samples into tissue culture (growing plantlets in a test tube) and ensuring that this material is disease-free.

To ensure uniform standards in regeneration procedures, the Trust is working with Bioversity International and the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) of the CGIAR to develop and disseminate crop-specific technical guidelines for regeneration. These guidelines will be available on the SGRP website and on CD-Rom in five languages.

This global regeneration initiative is being supported by the Trust through partnerships with the United Nations Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Australian Grains Research Development Corporation.

By Kijo Waruhiu, Global Crop Diversity Trust

Following the successful clearing of

regeneration backlogs, many

previously inaccessible

accessions will be internationally available to users

for the first time

For more information, contact Kijo Waruhiu kijo.waruhiu@croptrust.org

A field of regenerated wheat ready for harvest in Albania.

��Geneflow News

Joining forces for a ‘Green Revolution’ in �frica

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), a US government aid agency, and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a partnership for improving the incomes and food security of African farmers, have joined forces to boost African agriculture. The partnership will focus on improving the livelihoods of small-scale farmers by investing in Africa’s inadequate infrastructure, developing new crop varieties and providing farmers with seeds and fertilizer. According to former UN chief and current head of AGRA, Kofi Annan, 40% of crops are lost after harvest, a problem which new roads could help ease. “We need better technologies for efficient use of water, improved market infrastructure and paved roads so farmers can get their harvest to market” he said.

AGRA’s vice president, Akin Adesina, said the partnership aims to boost food production in three ‘breadbasket areas’: the Sahel region, which mainly cultivates millet and sorghum; humid zones suitable for root and tuber crops; and the east and south of Africa, where maize dominates.

“We believe that we can have a Green Revolution that allows farmers and households in the Sahel to be able to feed themselves,” Mr Adesina told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

The partnership will initially focus on Ghana, Madagascar and Mali. In Ghana, the partnership will make available improved varieties of maize, sorghum, millet, cowpea and soya bean to farmers. In Madagascar, it will focus on improving rice yields. In Mali, it will focus on irrigation and on providing disease-resistant crops. AGRA has already invested US$330 million and MCC US$1.7 billion in agricultural development in Africa.

“Collaborations such as ours are essential to putting in place long-term solutions to the food crisis,” said Mr Annan.

MCC head, John Danilovich, told the BBC that the deal reached in June this year marked “an important day for African farmers.”

Adapted from ‘Boost for Africa green revolution’,

BBC News, 12 June 2008.

The partnership will focus on

improving the livelihoods of

small-scale farmers

The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa is headed by former UN chief, Kofi Annan.

The new partnership will provide farmers with

improved varieties of staple crops like maize,

millet and sorghum.

� modern �tlantis

Kiribati President Anote Tong estimates that in 50 years or so his country will completely disappear under

rising sea levels. As a result of rapid climate change and melting glaciers, the central Pacific island nation is slowly

sinking into the sea. On 5 June 2008, the UN’s World Environment Day, Mr Tong appealed to the international community to help Kiribati’s population to relocate, insisting that emigration needs to start now.

The highest point in Kiribati is currently only 1.8 metres above sea level. According to a report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007, global sea levels rose at an average of 3.3 mm per year between 1993 and 2006. If the climate follows its current pattern, scientists predict that sea levels will rise 88 cm by the end of the century. According to The Guardian newspaper, a rise in sea level of close to 1 m could threaten even major cities such as New York, London and Tokyo.

In Kiribati, sea water has contaminated fresh water supplies and has destroyed crops. Erosion from flooding and storms is also a major problem. Communities living on the beach have already been relocated to higher

ground, but there are limits to where the i-Kiribati, as the people of the island are known, can take refuge.

“We have to find the next highest spot, and at the moment there are only the coconut trees,” said Mr Tong. Unfortunately, due to drought over the past three years, even the coconut trees are wilting.

At a celebration of World Environment Day in New Zealand, Mr Tong held talks with New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark on the resettlement of his population of 97 000. As dramatic as the islands’ likely fate may sound, Kiribati is not the only Pacific island nation threatened by rising sea levels. The Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Vanuatu are also in severe danger zones.

Based on the article ‘Paradise lost: climate

change forces South Sea islanders to seek sanctuary

abroad’, by Kathy Marks, The Independent, 6 June 2008.

“We have to find the next highest spot, and at the

moment there are only the

coconut trees”

It may look like an idyllic spot, but in the next 50 years or so the Pacific island nation of Kiribati could be completely submerged by rising sea levels.

Lidian Neeleman/istock photo

��Geneflow News

Managing pests and diseases with crop diversity

Every year, a large part of the world’s harvest is lost to pests and diseases. Those who are most affected by this loss are resource-poor farmers in the developing world. For these farmers, a poor harvest can mean the difference between life and death, as they struggle to feed themselves and their families.

A number of measures could be taken to limit losses. Pesticides and fungicides offer a solution, but they can damage the environment and harm people’s health and are often too costly for poor farmers to afford. Crop varieties bred to resist pests and diseases are another possible solution. However, limiting production systems to a few modern cultivars presents problems of its own: planting large areas with genetically uniform resistant varieties can provide the ideal conditions for new strains of pests and diseases to evolve, and the resistance of the variety may fail after only a few cropping seasons. Smallholders are, in any case, often unable to get hold of the latest varieties, and most

of the time they are too poor to buy them. Furthermore, modern varieties often do not perform well in marginal areas with low inputs. A more sustainable, cost-effective solution could lie in the diversity of traditional crops.

The project led by Bioversity, launched in November 2007, will help resource-poor farmers make the most of local crop diversity to control pests and diseases. “Farmers in the developing world need sustainable solutions that are low input, affordable and environmentally-friendly,” explained Carlo Fadda, scientist at Bioversity and global manager of the project.

The first phase of the project, which will run until 2010, is financially supported by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP-GEF) in collaboration with the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), the Directorate-General for International Cooperation, Netherlands (DGIS), and the national programmes of China, Ecuador, Morocco and Uganda.

The project is working with small-scale farmers in the four countries to help them use the local diversity available in key staple crops to minimize the damage caused by pests and diseases. The project focuses on banana and plantain, barley, common bean, faba bean, maize and rice.

Considerable evidence exists to support the project’s approach to pest and disease management. Studies of advanced agricultural systems have shown, for example, that crop mixtures and crop rotations can reduce the damage caused by pests and diseases. Research has also revealed that many farmers already use a diversity of traditional varieties and mixtures of modern and traditional varieties in this way. The benefits of such an approach are clear: not only is it affordable and environmentally sustainable (unlike the use of pesticides or fungicides for example), but it also protects the diversity of the local agricultural ecosystem.

“We are working to help farmers reduce the damage caused to their crops and to help protect them against future losses by identifying and deploying methods that include using the diversity of traditional varieties,” explained Fadda. This diversity acts as a buffer, improving the resilience of a system even under stress.

The starting point for the project was the development of a set of participatory tools to capture and understand farmers’ knowledge and practices for managing pests and diseases using local crop varieties. The tools include a detailed guide developed by partners with questions that probe for information on when and where intra-specific diversity can help to

manage pests and diseases, and to identify the ‘genetic choices’ farmers make to minimize losses caused by pests and diseases.

Tapping into this knowledge will make it easier to find solutions that suit both local needs and the local environment. It also adds a new dimension to work on pest and disease management, which has commonly focused only on three components: host, pathogen and environment. “The project will ensure that the fourth, critical component—the farmer—is also included” said Fadda.

Participatory trials in farmers’ fields and on research stations will be organized to assess the impacts that pests and diseases have on the productivity and stability of traditional varieties. Field and laboratory experiments will allow researchers to better understand the interactions between host and pathogen and the resistance mechanisms of different varieties. The experiments will also enable researchers to identify mixtures of different varieties that can help farmers reduce the damage caused by pests and diseases.

By integrating scientific analyses of the trial results with local farmer knowledge, project leaders hope to provide farmers with more options for fighting pests and diseases in a sustainable way.

Studies of advanced

agricultural systems have

shown that crop mixtures and

crop rotations can reduce the

damage caused by pests and

diseases

A farmer in Uganda tells a Bioversity researcher about the varieties of common bean she grows and their diseases.

ity In

For more information, contact Carlo Fadda, Bioversity International c.fadda@cgiar.org

�quatic life in rice fields—an essential source of food for rural �sian households

Rice is crucial for food security throughout Asia. But rice fields provide more than space to grow this staple crop. The intricate network of fields, small streams, irrigation canals, pools and ponds contains a multitude of other foods that are important to the nutrition of people living in

rice-growing areas. In the rice fields, people catch fish, frogs, shrimps, snails, snakes and insects for their daily consumption.

In many ways, rice fields are ‘invisible fisheries’. However, they are not officially recognized as an important source of fish, because the number of fish and other aquatic animals brought

home on a daily basis is too small to be picked up by national fisheries statistics.

To shed light on the importance of rice-based ecosystems as a source of non-rice food items, the FAO-Netherlands Partnership Programme (FNPP) sponsored a recent

household survey in Lao PDR which was conducted by the Living Aquatic Resources Research Institute and the Lao Department of Livestock and Fisheries. Over a period of one year, researchers made monthly visits to 240 households in three of the country’s provinces to find out the type, amount and source of aquatic foods people were consuming.

The results were astonishing: more than two-thirds of all the aquatic organisms that they consumed came from rice-based ecosystems. Fish made up about half of the total catch and more than half of these were caught in the rice fields. Ninety percent of the frogs consumed, the second most abundant aquatic food, were caught in the rice fields along with crabs, shrimps, snails and insects. For Laotians, fish is the most important source of animal protein whilst other aquatic animals are eaten as often as pork, chicken and beef. Even dry rice fields are gleaned for burrowing insects and crustaceans. Fish are fermented and stored for use during the relatively lean months of the dry season.

The Lao PDR is a country historically rich in aquatic resources. Natural wetlands abound, and rice fields have gradually become part of the scenery, replacing some of these wetlands. Aquatic

animals have adapted accordingly and move freely between the natural wetlands and the human-made rice fields.

Unfortunately, agricultural development often relies on the over-use of chemicals in the rice fields, putting the edible creatures that live there at risk—creatures that play double duty, in that they also keep pests at bay. So, good management practices are needed to ensure that increases in rice production go hand in hand with an enhanced aquatic biodiversity.

By Matthias Halwart, FAO

The results were astonishing:

more than two-thirds

of all aquatic organisms they

consumed came from rice-based

ecosystems

For more information, contactMatthias Halwart matthias.halwart@fao.org

To see the 10-minute video ‘Rice fields – much more than rice!’, visit the FAO Biodiversity website at www.fao.org/biodiversity/country-in-focus-laos/en/

A snakehead murrel (Channa striata) in a dried-up pond in Savanakhet, southern Lao PDR. This is just one of the species that

form an important part of the diet for rice-growing communities.

Children catching snakehead fish in a pond in Savanakhet, southern Lao PDR.

��

Rubber duck continent

Today, there are eight continents in the world, one of which consists entirely of plastic. Plastic flotsam covering an area twice the size of the continental United States is idling in the Pacific Ocean. This ‘plastic soup’, which stretches from Hawaii to Japan, has been classified as the world’s largest rubbish dump and is held in place by underwater currents. Known as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’, the dump comprises everything from rubber ducks to kayaks. The patch is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches.

An American oceanographer, Charles Moore, discovered the sea of waste in 1997 after participating in a yacht race from California to Hawaii. Moore and his crew decided to take a shortcut home through the North Pacific gyre, a section of slowly rotating currents that seafarers tend to avoid. There is little wind in the gyre, and even fishermen avoid it because its waters lack sufficient nutrients to support much sea life.

In the past, waste ending up in ocean gyres either biodegraded or washed up on shores. This is what happened with the container of thousands of

plastic yellow toy ducks which, while on its way to the US from China, tipped its contents into the Pacific Ocean in 1992, making news 11 years later when the ducks found their way to European shores.

However, although waste continues to wash up on shore, modern plastics are too durable to decompose. Instead, they are broken down into increasingly smaller pieces by sunlight. Eventually, they become individual molecules of plastic polymer that are still too tough for bacteria to biodegrade.

This plastic ‘continent’ threatens sea life, either ensnaring organisms that live there or indirectly affecting nearby wildlife when it washes ashore; when ingested, plastic may be fatal to animals. According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris kills more than a million seabirds and over 100 000 marine animals every year. Hideshige Takada, an environmental geochemist at Tokyo University, and his colleagues report that plastic fragment flotsam also soaks up toxins and pollutants such as DDT and PCBs. Organisms in the middle of the ocean devour the toxin-soaked plastics, fish devour the organisms and, in many cases, humans eat the fish.

The problem isn’t easy to assess, however; the plastic is difficult to see in satellite pictures because most of it floats just below the surface of the sea, trapped by high-pressure underwater currents.

Moore believes that plastic debris is the most common surface feature of the world’s oceans today. “Forty percent of the oceans are classified as subtropical gyres, [and] a fourth of the planet’s surface area has become an accumulator of floating plastic debris,” said Moore in an article for Natural History.

Moore warns that if consumers don’t take a step back and be more conscientious about what they are throwing away, the plastic continent could double in size over the next decade. There is no

way of ‘vacuuming’ up the waste. Not only would it be difficult and costly, since the fragments can be found as far as 30 m below the surface, but a large number of organisms would be destroyed in the process.

It looks like the plastic continent is here to stay.

Based on ‘The world’s rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to

Japan’, by Kathy Marks, The Independent, 5 February 2008.

“Forty percent of the oceans are classified

as subtropical gyres…a fourth

of the planet’s surface area

has become an accumulator of floating plastic

debris”

A sea of waste. More than a million seabirds, 100 000 marine

animals and countless fish die in the North Pacific every

year either from consuming plastic waste or from becoming

ensnared in it and drowning.is

Boxes containing thousands of plastic yellow ducks were washed overboard into the eastern Pacific Ocean following a storm in 1992. The ducks appeared on European shores 11 years later.

Rob Belknap/istock photo

Geneflow News

��Geneflow News��Feature Section ��

Supporting the women who protect our biodiversity

For many years Bioversity International has helped to raise global awareness about the role of women in protecting and managing biodiversity. In this issue of Geneflow, the third to focus on the relationship between women and biodiversity, new stories and facts are available to deepen our understanding. Case studies from nearly every region showcase women as the primary guardians of diversity. Because of their experience and role as keepers of traditional knowledge, women may represent our frail planet’s best hope for conserving the biodiversity of medicinal plants, vegetables, grains, legumes, tubers and more.

It is critical to ask therefore: how can we support the women who are protecting our biodiversity?

One key factor underlying poverty, malnutrition, food insecurity, environmental degradation and loss of

biodiversity is women’s limited control over land, seeds, credit, extension, education, markets and other important resources. This factor is well documented and highlighted in the most recent issue of the World Development Report. The importance of addressing such gender-based inequities cannot be overemphasized; they are part of the root system that perpetuates poverty, hunger and malnutrition. But I’d like to offer three more factors, albeit more subtle ones, that also need to be recognized: visibility, voice and reward.

Geneflow’s collection of articles highlighting the role of women in safeguarding biodiversity increases their visibility. From what I’ve experienced in the work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) Gender & Diversity (G&D) Programme, the power of visibility is not to be underestimated. Visibility helps counter one of the crushing aspects of inequality—being invisible and therefore voiceless. I hope that when the women highlighted in these Geneflow articles see the published stories about the importance of their work, they will feel valued and encouraged to carry on, whether as farmers, scientists or policy-makers.

Gaining visibility is a good but incomplete step. How do we also empower the women holding the world’s biodiversity in their hands? An external impact assessment of G&D’s women’s leadership series revealed that a woman coming from a culture with such traditional sayings as “a good woman is a quiet woman” often experiences a sense of insecurity, no matter what her outward successes are. Because of the internalization of such traditional maxims, she may be reluctant to put forward her ideas, to share her experiences or to take risks. During G&D’s carefully crafted leadership training series, each woman is encouraged to ‘find her voice’ and ‘to make her value visible’, resulting in positive changes for her, her team and her institution. I imagine similar support is needed to strengthen women’s voices at all levels.

We must also consider the cultural norms of our institutions. What kinds of work do we reward most? One of the women I’ve had the privilege of working with in the G&D programme’s initiative to fast track the science careers of African women is a lecturer in plant biology. In addition to her teaching responsibilities, she devotes much of her time to the slums where she teaches young men and women to

use the alleyways to grow amaranths, African eggplants, peppers, okra, sweet potato leaves and pumpkin leaves. This is hard, dirty and hot work; perhaps it is also risky. But it has brought improved nutrition and income to tens of thousands of slum dwellers. Is she celebrated? Is she rewarded?

The G&D programme has made some progress in raising the visibility of her extraordinary work, but this is not enough. Her focus on protecting and promoting traditional vegetables while providing hands-on nutritional support for the neediest may not translate into a successful career if our reward system overly emphasises publications and technologies. In other words: what are we doing to support the women who protect our biodiversity and therefore the nutrition, health and livelihoods of those who need it most?

Vicki Wilde, Director, CGIAR Gender &

Diversity Programme

“I hope that when the women

highlighted in these Geneflow

articles see the published

stories about the importance of

their work, they will feel valued

and encouraged to carry on, whether as

farmers, scientists or

policy-makers”

Doña Maura is part of a successful women’s association in Peru that produces organic quinoa for export. Ensuring that women have access to key resources like land, credit, education and markets is important for the conservation of agricultural biodiversity.

A. Camacho/Bioversity International

For more information, contact Vicki Wilde v.wilde@cgiar.org

To learn about the CGIAR Gender & Diversity Programme, visit www.genderdiversity.cgiar.org

��Geneflow NewsFeature Section��

Women: guardians of West �frica's crop diversity

Bioversity International’s nutrition team is working in West Africa to raise awareness of the nutritional value of traditional foods and of the importance of dietary diversity for health. But the key to food security and nutrition in the region may well lie in the hands of women.

As is the situation in most of the world, women in West Africa are typically the ones in charge of feeding and nourishing the family. But in West Africa, this responsibility means more than a trip to the supermarket to buy a week’s supply of food. In rural and peri-urban areas of West Africa, women are often also responsible for collecting nutritious plants from the wild, which they use to supplement family diets. This responsibility brings with it a wealth of knowledge about local food traditions and about the crop diversity that underpins the region’s rich and varied cuisine. This knowledge is handed down from mother to daughter, from generation to generation. And, once she is grown and married, a woman will bring this knowledge with her into her new family, ensuring that local traditions are kept alive.

Women play a dominant role in every part of West Africa’s food systems. Often they are

responsible for managing small parcels of land on the family farm or for growing food in small gardens around the home. Crops they produce include traditional leafy vegetables and minor staples such as cocoyams and bambara groundnuts as well as condiments and spices. Women prepare and serve food at home and sell any surplus in markets, providing an important source of extra income.

Women also play a leading role in food processing, often as small-scale processors or as members of women´s cooperatives. Their involvement in food processing ensures that traditional flavours are preserved even in the preparation of processed indigenous foods, such as fermented locust-bean cakes and fermented and sliced oilbean seeds. Women can also be found selling traditional and street foods in rural and urban markets and on the streets of major cities and small towns.

Changes in regional agricultural policies, specifically the shift in emphasis from traditional food crops to cash crops such as groundnut, rubber, cotton and Asian rice, have significantly affected the production of traditional crops, reducing their

availability. But in West Africa, women continue to ensure that these crops and the knowledge associated with them are kept alive.

At a time when diets are becoming increasingly simple, and nutritious traditional foods are being replaced by refined carbohydrates and fat, the role of women in promoting diversified diets rich in traditional crops is of vital importance. While they may not be graduates of schools of nutrition and dietetics, women in West African societies are the keepers of important traditional knowledge about local foods and their nutritional

qualities—knowledge that we can build upon to ensure food security, nutrition and health in the region.

By Francisca Smith, Honorary Fellow, Nutrition,

Knowledge of food traditions

is handed down from mother to daughter, from

generation to generation

For more information, contact Francisca Smith f.smith@cgiar.org

Women selling local produce on a roadside in Burkina Faso.

A. Nikiema/ICRISAT

Nutritional security and biodiversity: meet the women who strengthen the link

The recent rise in food prices reminds us just how vulnerable the world’s food supply is. While the crisis is getting very high-level attention (witness the emergency meeting of heads of state that took place in Rome in mid-2008), one sure-fire remedy—agricultural biodiversity—is still not getting the attention it deserves.

Agricultural biodiversity is the best insurance that people—particularly the poor and marginalized—have for ensuring a stable food supply in the face of economic and environmental challenges, such as rising food prices and global warming.

Agricultural biodiversity, in the form of local crops,

can help broaden the food basket, thereby reducing our dependency on expensive imports. Local crops are often also more nutritious than major commodities such as wheat or rice and can therefore contribute to more diverse and healthier diets.

For the past several years, Bioversity International has been working with partners to help them to make better use of their local biodiversity. The Neglected and Underutilized Species project, which is supported by the International Fund for Agricultural Development, is working with farmers in Bolivia, Peru, India and Yemen. Now in its second phase, the success of the project is in many ways due to women.

In India, for example, women researchers from the Home Sciences Department of the State Agricultural Universities at Dharwad and Bangalore have been working with local women’s groups and the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation to enhance the use of nutritious millets, including finger millet, little millet and Italian millet.

Millets are rich in protein, with high levels of essential amino acids. They also contain significant amounts of iron and calcium. Unlike

crops such as wheat and rice, they are also able to thrive in poor soils with little water, ensuring a stable supply of food even in the harshest years. Despite all these qualities, however, millets have gradually lost the popularity they once enjoyed among Indian communities. There are many reasons for this, including the laborious processing that millet grains require.

The project worked to improve the performance of the millets as well as to ease the burden involved in processing them. By introducing simple technologies such as mills for grinding, the project was able to substantially reduce the time that women spend processing the grains, making them easier to manage and therefore more attractive to grow.

The researchers also worked with local women’s groups to develop new recipes to make millet-based foods more attractive to consumers. Training in cultivation practices and marketing further strengthened the women’s capacities and helped boost their incomes through the sale of novel millet products, such as puddings, poppadom (a traditional Indian flat bread) and health drinks.

Such has been the success of these initiatives that the project is now planning to replicate these activities across other project sites in India.

By Stefano Padulosi, Bioversity International

For more information, contact Stefano Padulosi,Bioversity International s.padulosi@cgiar.org

Agricultural biodiversity, in

the form of local crops, can help

broaden the food basket thereby

reducing our dependency

on expensive imports

Members of the Kolli Hills women’s Self Help Group established by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. These women are actively involved in the cultivation, value addition and marketing of seeds and products prepared with nutritious millets.

“The development of recipes for the production of new attractive meals, particularly for the younger ones, has been a big success in target communities and there is a great demand for

disseminating cooking recipes to women. Most appreciated are also our weaning food recipes, which strengthen the calcium and iron intake of infants. Also worth mentioning is the importance of these millets for people affected by diabetes, because of the low glycaemic index of meals prepared with these wonderful crops.” — Dr Nirmala Yenagi, Dharwad University

turning over a new leaf

Grace Wambui lives in the village of Kiserian, near Nairobi, Kenya, with her husband and her baby daughter, Edith. Over the last few years Grace has seen some big changes take place on her family farm. Since they started growing traditional leafy vegetables and selling them to local supermarket chains in and around Nairobi, the family’s income has increased significantly. This is good news for Edith, since Grace has been able to set aside enough money from the sale of the profitable vegetables to pay for her daughter’s schooling when she gets a bit older.

Traditional vegetables were not always so lucrative. Until recently, farmers like Grace would have grown them only for home consumption, sometimes selling whatever was left at markets in the

village for a small fee. They might also have collected the leafy vegetables from the wild to use in cultural rituals such as marriage ceremonies or in home remedies for common ailments such as stomach-ache. Despite their nutritional and cultural values, traditional leafy vegetables were not commercially significant because they were considered by many to be inferior and old fashioned in comparison with introduced vegetables such as cabbage or kale.

As demand for traditional vegetables has increased—thanks largely to the efforts of local, national and international organizations to promote the nutritious greens over the past decade (see Geneflow 2006, ‘Kenyans flock back to traditional leafy vegetables’, p. 3)—the role of women as the main producers and marketers of leafy vegetables has grown.

A recent study of the impact of the work of Bioversity and its partners to promote the production and consumption of traditional leafy vegetables in Kenya shows that, despite their growing commercial value, leafy vegetables continue to be primarily a woman’s crop, with women cashing in on the benefits that have come with the vegetables’ rise in popularity.

But the study warns that this situation needs to be

monitored closely. As the status of leafy vegetables rises, men are beginning to see their potential as a cash crop and to play a larger role in their production and marketing, threatening the position of women in the process. “There is a real danger that men will take over as leafy vegetables become more profitable,” explained Elisabetta Gotor, an Italian Associate Scientist at Bioversity and one of the lead authors of the study. Ensuring that women continue to play a leading role in the production and marketing of leafy vegetables is important because it helps to empower them economically and socially.

The study sampled a total of 211 households from four regions where Bioversity and its partners have been actively seeking to raise the profile of leafy greens: Kisii in Western Kenya, Tharaka-Nithi in Eastern Province, Kilifi in Coast Province and peri-urban Nairobi, including the Kiambu and Thika Districts. The results highlighted the impact of these efforts on the incomes of farmers and on the production of traditional vegetables, both of which have grown. In peri-urban Nairobi, for example, the production of leafy vegetables has increased more than tenfold since work began to promote them in 1997.

Incomes have increased too, particularly where farmers have been linked to markets interested in selling their produce. And women, the main producers and marketers of leafy vegetables, are the main beneficiaries. In almost 80% of the households studied it was the women who kept the cash from sales of leafy vegetables and who decided what it would be spent on—mostly on more and better food and on school fees.

“We need to ensure that awareness is raised among women of the value of growing leafy vegetables so that they continue to be the ones that cash in the returns,” Gotor said. In this way, Grace Wambui and other women farmers like her will continue to reap the benefits that have come with the return of traditional leafy vegetables.

S. Mann/Bioversity International

Ensuring that women continue to play a leading

role in the production and

marketing of leafy vegetables

is important because it helps

to empower them economically and

socially

For more information, contact Elisabetta Gotor,Bioversity International e.gotor@cgiar.org

Grace Wambui poses with her daughter Edith.

�0Geneflow News�0Feature Section ��

“I am a seed keeper,” says Humnapur Laxmamma, a poor farmer from Andhra Pradesh, India. By planting rare crop varieties, she helps to protect local biodiversity, but she saves much more than just seeds. “With the seeds, I store my own knowledge of farming, the environment and life.”

Laxmamma belongs to a village-based women’s group, or sangham. And, like many other members of the group, she can’t read or write. So when the women teamed up with researchers to study how to sustain their local food systems, the biodiversity they depend on and the livelihoods that they support, they chose to use video to document the research and share its findings.

Now, thanks to this innovative research project, illiterate women like

Laxmamma have found a new way to record and share their knowledge. Laxmamma says that, having learned to use the video camera efficiently, she can really see how it can be used for storing “the knowledge of my community and interpreting it for the outside world.”

In fact, the Deccan Development Society (DDS), which coordinated the research in partnership with the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), had already trained the villagers to use video cameras, showing that illiteracy was no barrier to creativity. This inspired villagers to suggest using video to implement the DDS-IIED project.

Laxmamma and other sangham members have now travelled to Africa and Latin America to share their films with other rural communities who face similar challenges, such as loss of agricultural biodiversity, limited access to markets and a lack of control over market prices. In May 2008, the women joined DDS and IIED at the Conference of Parties to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity in order to launch DVDs and a book on the project.

The project has also sparked a revival of local food culture in Andhra Pradesh, and this

is helping to ensure that agricultural biodiversity and traditional farming practices are valued and safeguarded in several hundred villages. It has, for example, supported the villagers in their work to set up an organic food cooperative, which creates opportunities to sell endangered traditional grains and provides a stable market for small-scale farmers to sell their excess produce. These efforts are helping to raise the profiles and consumption of these ‘forgotten foods’. While these outcomes are important, the project’s methodology is itself also noteworthy.

“Too often, outsiders arrive in a rural setting, impose their research on the poor and then depart without sharing the results or benefits of their studies,” says Dr Michel Pimbert, director of IIED’s Sustainable Agriculture, Biodiversity and

Livelihoods Programme. “In this project, the women were equal partners in the design, implementation and communication of the research.”

“The farmers’ traditional narrative and understanding of their environment found wonderful expression in the films they made,” said P.V. Satheesh of DDS. “People felt both respected and empowered in the knowledge that they would be working with and communicating about this research in their own ways, at their own pace, and with significant control over the entire process.”

By Mike Shanahan, International Institute for Environment and

Development

Storing and sharing traditional knowledge using video

“The farmers’ traditional

narrative and understanding of their environment

found wonderful expression in the films they made”

Laxmamma (centre) and other sangham members on a farm in Mali during a knowledge-sharing visit.

Laxmamma (left) and other sangham members on a visit to Mali. P.V. Satheesh can be seen pictured in the centre.

For more information, contact Mike Shanahan mike.shanahan@iied.org

In male-dominated societies in the Andes, women are usually reluctant to speak out or talk about themselves. So it’s possible to miss the fact that women play a vital role in maintaining local crop diversity and in supporting the region’s food security.

The International Potato Center (CIP) is collaborating with the non-governmental organization Grupo Yanapai in the Chopcca community near Huancavalica in Peru to help local communities repatriate lost potato varieties. Raul Ccanto, an agronomist, and Maria Scurrah, the group coordinator, interviewed women from the communities of Ccasapata, Sotopampa and Dos de Mayomunities to find out more about their daily lives and responsibilities as potato farmers.

Potato is a staple food for Chopcca families, whose income is less than US$1 a day. Men do most of the heavy work, like ploughing the land and turning up the tubers. Women manage the storage of potatoes for food and for next season’s seed, as well as helping to plan the cultivation of potatoes and the harvest and post-harvest activities.

Ricardina Gavilan Escobar is 32 years old. She lives with her husband and six children in the Sotopampa community. Here is what she had to say:

“I participate in the entire process. When the field is ready for planting, I am in charge of selecting the seed tubers and taking the seed from storage. My husband will transport it to the plot on horseback. I am in charge of sowing and at harvest I gather up the potatoes.”

Selecting seed tubers for storage is also her responsibility. “First I pick out the largest ones, which go

for food, next I pick the seed, which have to be healthy, no worms and no damage from harvesting tools. Finally I pick out the small ones that have been damaged by the tools and the worms and these are destined to make chuño [freeze-dried potatoes].”

Her knowledge of the 17 native and five improved varieties she uses is impressive. “The potato storehouse is my territory,” she said. “I know how much to keep and when I can venture to exchange them. We do not sell any potatoes. Everything we grow is for food. The coloured potatoes we eat daily are the small ones, the large ones are kept for special occasions, when we have visits from family and neighbours or when we go to fiestas. Sometimes we barter with people who come to the community. They bring vegetables like onions, and we exchange them for potatoes. Bartering is done

only by women; men do not participate,” said Escobar.

Teofila Crispin Reginaldo and Tomasa Navarro Huamani are two other local women who also manage potatoes. Reginaldo grows 12 native varieties and two improved varieties; Huamani grows over 20 native varieties.

“The message comes through loud and clear that in Huancavelica, women play relatively restricted roles in the field but post harvest they are key,” said Scurrah. “The maintenance of potato diversity and food security depends largely on the women.”

By Raul Ccanto and Maria Scurrah,

Grupo Yanapai, and Paul Stapleton, CIP

Women’s hidden role in maintaining local potato diversity

Ricardina Gavilan Escobar preparing chuño (freeze-dried potatoes). Women play a leading role in maintaining potato diversity in the Peruvian community of Chopcca.

R.Ccanto/Grupo Yanapai

Tomasa Navarro Huamani in her potato store. R

For more information, contact Paul Stapleton p.stapleton@cgiar.org

“The maintenance

of potato diversity and food security

depends largely on the women”

Ten years after the introduction

of the rice breeding project,

Nepali farmers are successfully

growing their own rice and

improving local varieties through

participatory plant breeding

Plant breeding is a challenging process. So, national researchers in Nepal were initially sceptical that farmers could improve their rice crops by crossbreeding wild and local varieties rather than drawing on the traits of ‘exotic’ varieties. But ten years after the introduction of a participatory rice breeding project, Nepali farmers are successfully growing their own rice and improving local varieties through participatory plant breeding, in which farmers play a major role.

Begnas village was chosen as a site for a project designed to help farmers conserve and use local crop varieties. Coordinated by Bioversity International in collaboration with Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) and Nepal’s National Agricultural Research Council, the project was funded by Canada’s

International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and the Government of the Netherlands.

Local rice varieties have a high value due to their rich diversity and adaptability to the local environment, but give low yields. Modern varieties produce higher yields, but are lower in quality and less locally adaptable. When Surya Nath heard that researchers from Bioversity and LI-BIRD were attempting to improve local rice varieties to compete with modern types, he approached them with the idea of crossing a locally popular rice variety and a breed of wild rice found abundantly in lake and watershed habitats. His idea was to develop a variety adaptable to the waterlogged dhab area of Rupa Lake. Surya Nath, who has been farming organically for more than 20 years on a scattering

of small plots in Begnas village, was interested in learning the breeding techniques necessary to make the cross, so LI-BIRD breeders taught him. However, he quickly realized that he lacked the eyesight and dexterity necessary for the job.

“My vision was a bit weak, my hand was shaky and I worried that I would fail. So I taught my wife Saraswoti Adhikari about crossing varieties,” said Surya Nath, a Begnas farmer. “I knew something about biodiversity conservation because I was trained in permaculture, but I didn’t know how to breed local plant species and varieties.”

Saraswoti gradually became adept at removing anthers and pollinating ovaries with the pollen of a selected male parent. To date, she has successfully made 16 crosses of various types of local rice and three crosses of local and wild rice, the latter for the first time ever in Nepal. She has begun to apply her skills to other plants, such as the luffa, a native vegetable, and has started experimenting with coffee, one of the village’s main cash crops, exported mostly to the Japanese market.

“I hesitated at first, fearing that I might not succeed, but staff from LI-BIRD

encouraged me, and my confidence increased,” said Saraswoti. Asked if she thinks other women should take up crop breeding, she is humble. “I’m still learning. Until I’m sure it is entirely successful, how can I encourage other women to do it? But,” she added, after a moment, “if someone is interested, I’m ready to teach them.”

Although the project has ended, the Adhikaris and other Begnas farmers still meet regularly to discuss the performance of their crops. When they decide that a particular line could be improved by crossbreeding, they ask Saraswoti to take out her scalpel. Surya Nath and his wife have developed a promising variety of rice from crossing local Jethobudho rice (a variety prized for its soft texture, unique aroma and taste) with a high-yielding, locally-adapted Mansuli type. This variety is currently being evaluated by local institutions and Bioversity for further production and selection.

blurring the line between farmer and breeder

Saraswoti Adhikari (pictured here) and her husband, Nath Adhikari, have been working with Bioversity and local NGO LI-BIRD to breed improved varieties of their local rice.

People’s appreciation of agricultural biodiversity has a long history. The animals, crops and medicinal plants in modern farmers’ fields are the result of thousands of years of observation, domestication, selection and improvement. However, such efforts tend to go unrecognized by the international community—a fact that one woman living in rural Nepal is working to change.

Engaged in her daily domestic chores, Lal Kumari looks like any other rural housewife in Chaur, Nepal. But beneath her unassuming demeanour lies a profound knowledge of medicinal plants and a dedication to their conservation and use. Lal Kumari is heir to the ancestral Ayurvedic Vaidya—a traditional healing profession—the knowledge

of which was passed on to her by her father and grandfather. As a child, she helped her father collect and process plants from the forest for traditional medicines. Later, she married into a family of vaidyas and assisted her father-in-law.

In 1998, Lal Kumari met researchers from Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD)—an NGO—and Bioversity International while they were documenting traditional knowledge about plants in the village of Begnas. Two years later, LI-BIRD launched the Community Biodiversity Registration Programme in Lal Kumari’s village. This annual programme documents traditional knowledge on local plant resources in the rural community.

Lal Kumari and her husband, Jay Bahadur Thapa, were selected to be part of a group collecting information on medicinal plant species. As a result, she was able to advise LI-BIRD to include medicinal plants in the registration programme since knowledge about these valuable resources was eroding rapidly. In 2003, the husband and wife team recorded 165 different medicinal plant species in their small village and the adjoining forest.

Before the work began, most people considered the cultivation of medicinal plants to be a hobby rather than a way of earning a living. Lal Kumari, however, decided to put her knowledge of medicinal plants to the commercial test. The project provided her with processing machinery and funds for collecting medicinal plants through a small grant from UNDP-GEF (United Nations Development Programme–Global Environment Facility).

Lal Kumari and her husband then dedicated large areas to growing medicinal plants, replacing their maize, millet and taro crops and established a small-scale processing plant to package the products. Today, the couple earns US$65–72 per month from sales and the treatment of patients. More recently, with help from LI-BIRD, Jay has also begun to attend fairs and markets to sell their traditional medicines. These events

only take place once or twice a year but they can earn Jay and his family between US$435–725 in sales each time, providing a much-needed boost to supplement the family’s income. Lal Kumari’s medicines are gradually becoming known even in urban areas, helping to boost sales further.

Her success in domesticating and promoting medicinal plants was recognized when she was awarded LI-BIRD’s ‘Best Farmer Award’. Lal Kumari and her husband have become icons in their community and in neighbouring villages.

The impact on the village has been significant. Ten to twenty medicinal plants can now be found in every home garden. Lal Kumari is now passing on her knowledge to her son and daughter-in-law. Thanks to her dedication and foresight, Chaur’s villagers can rely on local healers for minor health problems rather than having to spend time and money travelling to the city. Lal Kumari has restored her people’s faith in traditional medicine and revived a nearly lost heritage.

Bioversity International and Abishkar Subedi, LI-BIRD

one woman’s quest to raise the profile of wild medicinal plants

Lal Kumari received an award for her efforts to domesticate and promote medicinal plants in Nepal.

The impact on the village has been

significant. Ten to twenty medicinal

plants can now be found in every

home garden

Lois Englberger has dedicated her career to promoting nutritious diets based on local foods. Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.

Dr Lois Englberger, an American researcher working with the Island Food Community of Pohnpei (IFCP), has lived in Micronesia and the Pacific for many years. For the past three years, she has spearheaded the IFCP’s ‘Go Local’ awareness campaign. Geneflow caught up with Dr Englberger recently to find out more about the campaign.

When did the ‘Go Local’ campaign start?

The term ‘Go Local’ was coined in the 1980s by Bermin Weilbacher, a Micronesian who understood the importance of valuing local traditions such as food. But it wasn’t until 1998 that people in Pohnpei became really interested in ‘going local’, when their own local foods were analyzed and unique Micronesian nutrient-rich varieties were identified.

The assessment began as part of an effort to identify local foods that might alleviate the serious emerging problem of vitamin A deficiency in young children in the area. This was happening because more and more people were abandoning their traditional diets in favour of rice and other imported foods with a much lower nutritional value.

Going local with Lois Englberger in Pohnpei

In 1998, an analysis of the local Karat banana, which has deep yellow-orange flesh, showed that it was rich in provitamin A carotenoids, in particular beta-carotene. This prompted the launch of a campaign in 1999 to promote Karat and other yellow and orange-fleshed banana varieties. Over time, other local foods and varieties were also analyzed and an array of carotenoid-rich foods, including yellow-fleshed giant swamp taro varieties, were identified and promoted as part of the campaign.

In 2005, this effort was further stepped up as we began an intensive campaign to promote local foods as part of our involvement with a global health study led by the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment. We chose ‘Go Local’ as our slogan since it embodies all the elements involved in growing, appreciating, eating and valuing local foods, and Bermin agreed to let us adopt his term. We later modified it into ‘Let’s Go Local’ to invite a group movement. We also started using an acronym, CHEEF, to describe the “CHEEF” benefits of local food: culture, health, environment, economics and food security.

How did you learn about the benefits of eating locally?

We have known for many years that eating local foods has health benefits. However, we were not aware of the specific benefits of local Micronesian foods until 1998, when we analyzed the banana variety Karat and discovered that it is very rich in provitamin A carotenoids (over 50 times that of common white-fleshed bananas) and other nutrients, such as riboflavin (vitamin B²). We also found that yellow-fleshed giant swamp taro varieties are rich in provitamin A and other carotenoids. Foods rich in provitamin A carotenoids protect against night

blindness, infection and ‘weak blood’. Carotenoid-rich foods help protect against chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, which are serious problems in Micronesia.

What has been your proudest achievement?

I am happiest with the results of our local foods awareness campaign. Prior to 1998, we did not see many Karat and other local bananas sold in markets, and people were not aware of their health benefits. It is a group achievement that locals are now beginning to recognize nutrient-rich bananas. It has been a joy for me to work with the Pohnpei Chief of Agriculture and other IFCP members, the Mand community team, our ‘Island Food Go Local’ email group, the ‘Let’s Go Local’ High School Club and many others committed to conserving and promoting local foods and varieties.

What kind of an impact has the campaign had in Micronesia?

The campaign’s efforts have influenced people to start discussions on nutrition, and it has started to spread to other islands of the Federated States of Micronesia and other

Pacific Island countries as well. The evaluation of our Pohnpei case study in the global health project showed that there was a significant increase in consumption of bananas, taro and green vegetables in our target community and that awareness relating to local food has changed positively over a two-year time period. There is still a long way to go, but we are positive that our efforts will bring about more change.

It wasn’t until 1998 that people

in Pohnpei became really

interested in ‘going local’,

when their own local foods

were analyzed and unique

Micronesian nutrient-rich

varieties were identified

For more information about the ‘Let´s Go Local’ campaign, contact nutrition@mail.fm or visit the website at www.islandfood.org

The women of Douentza in Mali thought they had seen it all—conflict, disease and drought. But when their crops started failing year after year, they looked on in disbelief as farms that had consistently provided for their families became less and less productive.

The Douentza women call this phenomenon a ‘changing of the fundamentals’, meaning that the old rules governing a balance between the good and bad years had been swept away. The trees stopped flowering and their fruits withered. The maize planted by the women failed in two out of three years. The rest of the world called it ‘climate change’ and created projections of how it would eventually affect countries in the North, but in Douentza the women only knew that the fundamentals had changed.

Now, with the support of the Unitarian Service Committee of Canada (USC), a voluntary organization dedicated to promoting healthy communities in developing countries, the Community Biodiversity Development and Conservation Program (CBDC) and Fondation Ensemble, the women of Douentza are attempting to reconstruct their livelihoods.

Conserving water

Higher temperatures and lower annual rainfall have heightened the need for water-saving measures such as reducing rainfall run-off and improving water conservation. In an attempt to make better use of available water, farmers have been visiting local community seed banks and selecting local landraces that can help improve water infiltration and water retention in the soils. Farmers’ varieties are locally accessible, free for local use and contain a full package of genetic traits well suited to the region’s microclimate. Furthermore, the rare crop varieties stored in the local seed banks have a number of traits, developed through generations of selection by farmers, that address salinity, drought and other biophysical stresses that have become commonplace in the region.

The women have also developed innovative strategies for conserving rainfall and reducing run-off. Half moons are carved into the dry soils, reinforced, and used to gather rainwater, which the women can then use to water their plants.

Conserving plant diversity

While the conservation of plant genetic resources in Douentza can be as straightforward as seed storage at the household level, the deliberate conservation of a diversity of seeds in community gene banks has helped strengthen the resilience of the community by providing a stock of planting material that people can draw on in times of need. As climate change makes the environment drier, hotter and harsher this treasure trove of diversity has become a lifeline for the farmers of Douentza, providing them with much needed traits, such as drought resistance, to adapt their crops to a changing climate.

Appropriate livestock

With the help of USC’s Seeds of Survival Program, the women farmers of Douentza have also developed strategies and techniques for making better use of their water and livestock resources. For

example, families have been exchanging large domestic animals, such as cattle, for smaller ones, such as goats and sheep, that don’t need human help to survive.

Home gardens

As the dry season becomes longer, and the pressures to migrate for off-farm work escalate, a number of families have profited from the establishment of women’s vegetable gardens. These gardens, cultivated by women, operate in the off-season and provide income and healthy food in otherwise difficult times. A basin to catch rainwater is connected to a basic drip irrigation system to water the garden.

As climate change worsens, the women farmers of Mali will continue to develop innovative strategies for making the most of their local crops and livestock and to improve their water conservation measures. The techniques, genetic resources and technologies they are developing will prove vital in the battle against climate change.

By Mana Diakité, USC West Africa Coordinator

Changing the fundamentals: �frican women lead fight to cope with climate change

As climate change worsens,

the women farmers of Mali

will continue to develop innovative

strategies for making the

most of their local crops

and livestock and to improve

their water conservation

measures

In the village of Douentza, in Mali, women are looking for new ways to cope with climate change.

L. Latremouille

For more information, contact Mana Diakité manausccm@usccanadamali.org

Life can be hard in Niger’s Aguié district. The soils are poor and dry and the scarce rainfall that farmers depend on for their harvests is becoming even scarcer as climate change takes its toll. In such an unforgiving environment it’s crucial to have access to plant varieties that are adapted to local conditions.

With support from the International Fund for Agricultural Development, Bioversity has been working with farmers in Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger to improve access to local crop diversity and to build people’s capacity to use this resource to improve their livelihoods. In Niger, the project has had a significant impact on the lives of women farmers.

For years, women farmers in the villages of Guidan Tagno, Dan Saga and Elgueza in the district of Aguié in Niger have been topping up the family meals of millet and sorghum with nutritious leafy vegetables, which they often collected from the wild. Any surplus vegetables are sold at market and the extra income is used to buy condiments and other foods to supplement family diets. But factors such as climate change and agricultural intensification have been interfering with this practice, making it increasingly difficult for the women to get hold of the nutritious greens.

“We worked with women farmers to improve the domestication of wild leafy vegetables species by helping them get good quality seed,” explained Raymond Vodouhe, coordinator of the project. One of the ways the project did this was by introducing ‘diversity fields’.

Diversity fields are plots of land managed by the community in collaboration with researchers and agricultural extension workers. A field is usually planted with traditional and improved crop varieties jointly selected by farmers and researchers. In the case of Aguié, local women farmers were also eager to include wild species of leafy vegetables in the diversity field. Groups of farmers from the village then take it in turns to manage the fields, recording their observations and sharing them with the researchers and the rest of the village. Together, the researchers and farmers select from the field the varieties that best suit local needs for taste, yield and resistance to pests and diseases. Farmers from neighbouring villages are encouraged to visit the diversity field and to participate in the discussions, strengthening social links between villages in the process.

“The women farmers we worked with in Niger were particularly keen to

include species of wild leafy vegetables in the diversity fields,” Vodouhe said. Cassia tora, one of two wild leafy vegetable species chosen for the research, is known to be rich in zinc, beta-carotene and ascorbic acid, important nutrients that are lacking in the staples normally consumed in the district.

“We were able to train many women in the Aguié area, improving their ability to domesticate species of wild leafy vegetables and to produce good-quality seed,” said Vodouhe, adding that the number of women producing and selling seed of leafy vegetables in the area had increased as a result of the work. Not only have the women benefited from having more income from the sale of their seed, but the availability of nutritious leafy vegetables on the market has also increased, thereby improving the diets of the locals.

“A recent inventory conducted in Niger indicated that there are between 100 and 150 wild species that

are eaten by urban and rural people as vegetables,” explained Vodouhe. “These species are important for food security, nutrition and health and deserve more attention from research and development agencies.” Promoting minor crops such as these could also have a positive impact on the lives of women, helping to empower them both socially and economically.

Seeds of wealth

Not only have the women benefited from having more

income from the sale of their seed, but the availability

of nutritious traditional leafy

vegetables on the market has also

increased thereby improving the

diets of the locals

For more information, contact Raymond Vodouhe, Bioversity Internationalr.vodouhe@cgiar.org

Drying leaves of Cassia tora, a traditional leafy vegetable

rich in zinc, beta-carotene and ascorbic acid.

With a tensile strength far higher than that of synthetic fibres like rayon and nylon, abaca fibre is considered to be the strongest fibre in the world. It is known internationally as Manila hemp since about 84% of the world’s supply comes from the Philippines where it has flourished for centuries.

While it is primarily used around the world to produce cord and ropes, the abaca industry is now expanding to include the production of furniture, cosmetics, currency, grocery bags and other products made from this versatile fibre.

Abaca (Musa textilis) resembles its edible relative the banana, though it is generally shorter and has narrower leaves and produces only small inedible fruits. As a result, the stem, which produces the high-quality fibres, is the most valuable part of the plant.

The major abaca growing areas are in Bicol and Visayas in the Central Philippines, where the plant grows perennially on hillsides and in other marginal areas. Importantly, it provides a livelihood to many small-scale growers.

Abaca is easy to grow, as it propagates itself vegetatively through suckers and stems which grow underground (known as corms). And production can be greatly improved through proper fertilization, pruning and weeding (to achieve optimum density) and disease management (to combat bunchy top and abaca mosaic viruses).

The plant grows to 3–5 m tall and takes two to four years to bear fruit. However, it produces new suckers that will produce up to 30 daughter plants and which can in turn be harvested for fibres as early as eight months after they are planted.

Once men have harvested, striped and carried the fibres from upland farms to the villages, local women will dye and weave the fibres into intricately woven fabrics. A good example is the T’nalak—a fine piece of fabric woven from abaca fibre by the skillful hands of the T’boli women, one of the

native tribes found around Lake Sebu. The cloth is dyed with distinct red, white and black colours derived from the roots and leaves of trees.

T’nalak fabric is used to make clothes and to decorate people’s homes, and weaving it is a tedious and arduous task, requiring patience, creativity and a sharp memory to recall particular geometric designs. The T’boli women are called ‘dreamweavers’, since the geometric designs in the cloth are derived from the women’s dreams, which

are in turn believed to be influenced by the tribe’s rituals and traditions. The unique designs are handed down protectively from mothers to their daughters, making the T’nalak a rare gem that reflects deeply-rooted traditions of the tribal women’s proud identity.

By Agustin B. Molina, Jr, Felipe S. dela Cruz, Jr and

Ma. Lizbeth J. Baroña, Bioversity International

the dreamweavers of t'boli

The T’boli women

are called ‘dreamweavers’,

since the geometric designs in

the cloth are derived from the women’s dreams

Women in the Philippines weave colourful fabrics out of abaca fibre. Their dreams are said to be the source of inspiration for the intricate geometric designs.

F. de la Cruz

The stem of the abaca plant is used to produce high-quality fibres.

F. de la Cruz

For more information, contact Agustin Molina a.molina@cgiar.org

Six-month-old Roshni is a shadow of healthy babies her age: she suffers from severe acute malnutrition, weighing less than 60% of the ideal median weight for her height. Roshni was born in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, considered a part of ‘modern India’ and a land of rapidly growing wealth. Now, she lives at UNICEF’s Nutrition Rehabilitation Centre in the town of Shivpuri.

Despite its growing wealth, India has some of the highest rates of child malnutrition and mortality, and rates are highest in Madhya Pradesh. A report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) makes clear that empowering Indian women is a crucial step towards alleviating malnutrition levels.

There are 10 million children living in Madhya Pradesh. Ten years ago, official statistics reported that 55% of them were malnourished. Two years ago, India’s National Family Health Survey reported a figure of approximately 60%, an increase of 5% at a time of economic boom.

“Inadequate access to food, poor feeding practices, [and] poor childcare practices” are the reasons why the malnutrition rate has gone up, Dr Vandana Agarwal,

UNICEF’s nutrition specialist for Madhya Pradesh, told BBC News. “In the past year, food prices have increased significantly, but people’s incomes haven’t improved. Like wheat, [which] earlier they used to buy … [for] eight rupees a kilogram … is [now] 12 rupees.”

In this area of India, low rainfall has caused crops to fail. And though in theory the government provides 30 kg of subsidized flour a month to poor families, the system is unreliable.

IFPRI reports that India’s high incidence of child malnutrition is part of a “wider regional anomaly”, an anomaly that may have women and their status at its core.

Surprisingly, South Asia has a higher rate of child malnutrition than sub-Saharan Africa, despite having

higher incomes, widespread education and access to clean water. A key reason for this difference may lie in the low status of women in South Asian countries. If a woman’s status is low, this will have an impact on her access to food. In India, for example, it is common practice to feed the male members of the household first, leaving less for the women to eat. Such practices may partly explain why 83% of women in India suffer from iron deficiency anaemia as compared with 40% in sub-Saharan Africa.

Women’s status and child nutrition are closely linked. A malnourished mother is more likely to give birth to a baby with a low birth weight, an important indicator of a child’s survival. One-third of Indian babies are born underweight, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa, one sixth of babies are born underweight.

According to IFPRI, improving women’s status through education and access to resources is crucial to reducing child malnutrition in countries such as India. When women are in control of household resources, they are more likely than men to use them for items that are beneficial to their children’s nutrition and health such as food, clothing and health care.

Based on ‘Malnutrition getting worse in India’,

by Damian Grammaticas, BBC News, 10 June 2008.

Women’s status is key to improving malnutrition in India

South Asia has a higher rate of

child malnutrition than sub-

Saharan Africa, despite the

higher incomes, widespread

education and access to clean

The stem of the abaca plant is used to produce high-quality fibres.

India has some of the highest rates of child malnutrition in the world. In the Kolli Hills in India, Bioversity has been working with local

women to improve the nutrition and health of the community through the production and consumption of nutritious millets. S

ity In

For more information about child malnutrition in India and its causes see www.ifpri.org/media/BeijingPlus10/briefIndia.pdf and www.ifpri.org/2020Chinaconference/pdf/beijingbrief_Svedberg.pdf

�0Geneflow News�0Feature Section ��

In the highlands of northern Ecuador, native farmers and scientists have joined forces to promote rural development and rescue endangered native crops. Concerned about the decline of their traditional agriculture and the gradual loss of their rich diversity of native crops, the Quichua-speaking communities of Cotacachi are seeking to improve their livelihoods without having to abandon their cultural identity.

A project to increase the use of native crops began in 2002 through a partnership between the region’s indigenous farmers’ union (UNORCAC), the National Agricultural Research Institute (INIAP), Bioversity International and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which also provided the financial support. Over the past six years, the project has been pioneering innovative methodologies to add value to native crops as a way of promoting their on-farm conservation and increasing their use.

This approach recognizes and reinforces the central importance of local crop diversity in the traditional

culture, cuisine and economy of Cotacachi. Such has been the success of the project that

UNORCAC was recently awarded the 2008 Equator Prize, which included a cash award of US$ 20 000 in

Ecuadorian women play a central role in conserving native crops

This approach recognizes

and reinforces the central

importance of local crop

diversity in the traditional

culture, cuisine and economy of

Cotacachi

A woman displays native varieties of maize and beans

at a seed fair in Cotacachi, Ecuador. Thanks to the project,

the women of Cotacachi are growing a wider variety of their

native crops. M. R

recognition for the initiative that best exemplified the conservation of agricultural biodiversity.

The project focuses on the fundamental and varied role of women in Andean agriculture. Thanks to its efforts to restore the diversity of native crops to rural households, Quichua-speaking women are now growing a wider variety of native crops, including Andean grains and various vegetables, fruits, roots and tubers in their dooryard gardens.

These ancestral crops, which are little-known outside the Andean region, are used to prepare local dishes. Through nutrition workshops and traditional cooking classes, the project has helped the younger generation of Quichua housewives use native crops to improve their family’s diets, reduce their reliance upon expensive store-bought ingredients and revive the traditional cuisine of their region. The Andean crops cultivated by women in their gardens also help diversify the family farm and provide an additional source of income—as surplus crops can be sold at markets.

With help from the project, women artisans from

several communities are organizing cooperatives that produce high-quality handicrafts using native crops. Examples include traditional espadrilles made from fibre of the local cabuya plant, decorative weavings and traditional board games using colourful bean varieties as game pieces.

The project also supports a group of local midwives who use medicinal plants in their traditional practices. These indigenous health practitioners provide an important service to rural families. The project established a community-run ethnobotanical garden to propagate medicinal plants for the midwives, for example. The garden is also an income-generating attraction, where visitors can see and learn about an astonishing diversity of useful Andean plants.

Women’s groups are actively involved in reviving traditional foods, particularly during the many important indigenous festivals held throughout the year. One example is Inti Raymi, the harvest-time Festival of the Sun, which is characterized by more than a week of ceremonies, sumptuous communal feasts and ritual dances. The traditional feasts include roast guinea

pig (cuy) with a savoury pumpkin seed sauce, accompanied by native potatoes and an appetizing cornucopia of other Andean roots, tubers, grains and vegetables. Community members and visitors enjoy local beverages that include refreshing maize and fruit concoctions called champús and mazamorra or stronger, fermented drinks like chicha de yamor, which is made from up to eight different varieties of maize.

Visitors wishing to experience one of these festivals firsthand or who want to spend a few days at a rural lodge learning about local crops and cuisine with a traditional Andean farm family can

get more information and make reservations through the community-based tour agency, Runa Tupari Native Travel (www.runatupari.com).

By David Williams and Marleni Ramirez,

lLocal varieties of maize outside a house in Cotacachi, Ecuador. The project is helping Quichua women to improve their livelihoods through the diversity of their local Andean crops.

For more information, contact Marleni Ramirez m.ramirez@cgiar.org

In Armenia, there is an ancient tradition of collecting wild plants for use as foods and medicines. And this is a custom that continues today, with 10 to 15% of the average Armenian’s diet being composed of wild plants.

With the support of the Bioversity project on the wild relatives of crops, which is funded by the Global Environment Facility and implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme, scientists got together with rural communities in Armenia to gather information about the collection, use and conservation status of a range of wild plants. The survey focused specifically on how the plants were collected, how much collecting was going on and on the uses and benefits of these plants.

The survey revealed, among other things, that wild plants are collected mainly by women aged between 30

and 50. The women take the surplus to city markets, where it is sold both fresh and processed, providing an important source of income for rural households. In the highland areas of Armenia, women can be found hiking up mountains as high as 2500–3500 metres to collect wild plants in an effort to feed their families.

It also found that rural communities in Armenia collect a variety of wild plants. Some species of dock (a type of sorrel) and wild carrot, for example, are collected for use in local dishes and as medicines. In many countries, these species would be considered noxious weeds. The shoots and leaves of dock are used fresh or are made into garlands for drying and then stored for use as a medicine during the winter.

In addition to its high nutritional value, dock is well known for its medicinal properties; it contains emodin and antrachinon compounds, which have anti-inflammatory properties. Other wild plants used in local dishes are purslane, capers, plantain, wild beet, cow parsley, sickle weed, mallow and Puschkinia (striped squill). Rich in vitamins and nutrients, these wild plants are mainly gathered in the early spring and eaten as leafy vegetables—fresh, dried or pickled.

The survey tapped into the wealth of local knowledge about wild plants. In some cases, researchers found that communities were mistaken about the properties of the plants they collected and were misusing them as a consequence. For example, chamomile was being collected for medicinal purposes. But the chamomile that grows in Armenia does not contain a sufficient amount of the biologically active compounds to make it effective as a medicine. The researchers emphasized the importance of educating communities on the correct use of certain plants.

Women continue to be the main source of knowledge about wild plants in Armenia. This knowledge has been passed down from generation to generation and continues to the present day. It is our responsibility to transfer it safely to future generations.

By Ovsanna Zopunyan, Head of Public Awareness Team, Crop Wild Relatives

Project, Armenia

Women’s traditional uses for wild plants in �rmenia

Women continue to be the main

source of knowledge about

wild plants in Armenia

An Armenian woman gathers wild leafy vegetables in her apron. A survey conducted in Armenia found that most wild plants are collected by women.

Canned shoots of wild plants and other products for sale in a roadside market, Armenia.

CWR project Armenia

For more information, contact Ovsanna Zopunyan ovsanna_zopunyan@yahoo.com

Pig production is a common activity for women in the remote mountain villages of Laos. In traditional systems, farmers feed scavenging pigs on a diet of starchy foods supplemented with leaves collected from the forests. They typically spend many hours a day collecting plants from the forest to fatten their animals. However, overuse is slowly depleting the forests, forcing the women to spend more time searching for greenery to feed the pigs.

Sone, her husband Onkeo and their children come from a village near the city of Luang Prabang. The family normally raises four or five sows at a time and sells the piglets. Unsold piglets are fattened in pens until they reach 60 kilograms, the standard weight for pigs to be sold for slaughter. On the customary diet of leaves cooked with rice, bran, cassava and maize, it takes pigs ten months to reach 60 kg.

But research by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) aimed at promoting high-protein legumes and grasses for feeding cattle, buffalo and goats has had unexpected spin-off benefits for village pig farmers like Sone.

“Innovative farmers fed the forages to their cattle and buffalo and also evaluated them as a pig feed,” said Dr Werner Stür, leader of an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) project investigating forage legumes for pigs. ACIAR is an Australian government agency that provides aid to developing countries in the form of collaborative agricultural research and development projects.

The legume that farmers have embraced in Laos is a Stylosanthes guianensis accession called ‘stylo 184’.

It is rich in protein, grows well in poor soils and can be fed to pigs raw. Most importantly, it grows well in the early part of the wet season when conventional pig feed is sparse.

Sone and Onkeo joined a small group of farmers who started growing ‘stylo 184’ as a supplement for their pigs. Pigs fed a few handfuls of fresh stylo daily gained weight much faster, reaching 60 kg in 6 rather than 10 months. Stylo allowed the women to stop raiding the forest. And, growing it meant that it took them less time each day to gather the stylo leaves, allowing them more time to tend their upland rice fields.

Having a readily available source of green feed has also changed husbandry methods and given a further boost to incomes. The family now keeps their sows in pens instead of letting them scavenge, allowing them to manage more animals; they now raise as many as 14 pigs at a time. Pig production now provides more than half the family’s income.

The project has successfully involved women, who are usually responsible for rearing pigs, even though the men traditionally attend the project meetings.

“In almost all households it is the women who often spend up to two hours collecting green feed each day,” said Mr Phengsavanh, a research fellow on the project. “With stylo, women no longer need to collect native greenery and spend only 15 to 30 minutes a day cutting and preparing stylo for pigs to eat. This labour saving has been a major reason for the adoption of ‘stylo 184’.”

As the project progresses, the initial contact in new villages is the village headman, who often calls other men and only a few women to the first meetings. “Once we start working with the villagers to improve pig production it becomes clear that it is the women who are really in charge, so we often end up in meetings consisting of about 75% women and 25% men,” Mr. Phengsavanh said.

In coordination with ACIAR, partnerships with non-governmental organizations and development projects are seeing the work on forage legumes reach about 1200 farmers.

By Robin Taylor, ACIAR

Forage crops ease the burden of finding pig feed

The project has successfully

involved women, who are usually responsible for

rearing pigs, even though the men traditionally

attend the project meetings

For more information, visit www.aciar.gov.au

A Lao farmer chops stylo to feed the family’s pigs.

��

Shifting cultivation has been practiced on a large scale for hundreds of years in the north Western Ghats region of Maharashtra, India. This form of traditional agriculture, where plots of land are temporarily cultivated then abandoned, was, until recently, the main livelihood approach of farmers living along the higher westward slopes of the north Western Ghats.

However, farmers are slowly abandoning this traditional form of agriculture, as they move to the cities in search of better livelihoods. And, with the decline in the use of shifting agriculture, the villages of the north Western Ghats are losing important indigenous knowledge that would otherwise help them adapt their agricultural systems to adverse environmental conditions.

The Applied Environmental Research Foundation,

a non-governmental organization campaigning for sustainable development through community-based conservation and natural resource management, has been studying shifting cultivation for the last eight years. Research by the Foundation has revealed that these traditional systems are rich in agricultural biodiversity and that they are sustained by a wealth of traditional knowledge. Together, these factors make shifting cultivation a highly suitable and viable livelihood option for communities living in the region.

Traditional knowledge includes a thorough understanding of weather conditions, crop diseases, the quality of the soil and the effect of rainfall on local crops. Understanding all of these factors is imperative for the annual selection of crop varieties by farmers.

In the north Western Ghats, for example, local people know that heavy pre-monsoon rains will leave excess moisture in the soil, potentially spurring the onset of diseases. So they delay planting certain varieties of finger millet known as nachani that are particularly vulnerable.

The farmers also know that it is auspicious if korvi, a fungal disease, appears before the formation of crop ears, since it heralds an increased number of shoots and, in turn, a higher crop yield. However, if the infection occurs after the inflorescence appears, it damages ear formation. Local communities make individual field assessments of soil fertility based on factors including soil type and previous harvest; they then lengthen or shorten the fallow period accordingly. Fields with more fertile soil closer to the community are cultivated earlier than fields that are farther away and less fertile.

Although nachani is the main crop grown under shifting cultivation, in extreme drought conditions farmers also grow lower-quality millet varieties known as harik. Now however, harik is rarely grown because food grains are available from government rationing shops during droughts. As a result it has all but vanished from most of the region except the

Sindhudurg district. During droughts, therefore, coastal people sometimes borrow harik seeds from communities still practising shifting cultivation in the higher reaches of the Western Ghats.

Women are responsible for maintaining the seeds of different crop varieties, which they acquire by exchanging seeds, and deciding when to sow them. The role of men is restricted to cutting and burning the forests to make a field. However, women oversee the preparation of the fields to ensure that certain trees are retained to use for growing vegetable climbers.

Clearing of the forests in this way also provides a large supply of fuel wood that can last up to eight months, saving the local women the effort of going out and searching for fuel wood. This sustainable supply of fuel wood considerably reduces the pressure on other common property resource areas, such as village forests and grazing grounds and in some rare cases, sacred village groves.

By Archana Godbole, Applied Environmental Research Foundation

Farmers abandon shifting agriculture in the Western Ghats

For more information, contact the Applied Environmental Research Foundation aerf@hathway.com

With the declining practice

of shifting agriculture, the

villages of the north Western

Ghats are losing important

indigenous knowledge

��Feature SectionA

Shifting cultivation has been practiced for hundreds of years in the north Western Ghats region. Women play an important role in these systems, acquiring seeds and deciding when to sow them.

��Special Report

Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International, shares his views on the food crisis and the potential of agricultural biodiversity for providing sustainable, long-term solutions for the world’s poorest people.

The food price crisis is hitting the poorest people hardest, and the immediate response of governments has been to increase

emergency food aid. If developed countries are sufficiently generous, that may stave off a global famine. But food aid is no more than a short-term fix. In the long run, there is no getting away from the fact that the world needs to produce more food at a price that the poor can afford and in a manner that does not destroy the environment.

Some have pointed out that investment in agricultural research and development has slowed considerably over past decades and that more research is needed, not least because improving agriculture is the most cost-effective investment one can make in economic development. I support calls for more investment in agricultural research for developing countries. But I also think that the target of that research needs to expand, from an almost exclusive reliance on simplified production systems, based on a few improved varieties of crops, to one in which agricultural biodiversity is allowed to play a much fuller part. This kind of research will help the poorest farmers to feed themselves more effectively.

Agricultural biodiversity is commonly seen as a source of traits that professional breeders can use to create improved crop varieties and livestock breeds. This will continue to be important, but there is so much more that agricultural biodiversity can deliver.

Farmers who use intensive farming methods and who grow monocultures of genetically identical plants need expensive chemicals

to protect their crops from pest and disease epidemics. We know, however, that fields of mixed varieties resist onslaughts of pests and diseases rather well. Bioversity International is researching the ways that farmers traditionally use biodiversity to protect their crops and hopes to improve on their techniques. The diversity of crops and species can also enable farmers to make better use of their lands, capturing unreliable rainfall and substituting it for impractical and often unaffordable irrigation.

Agricultural biodiversity can substitute effectively

�gricultural biodiversity: the key to solving the food crisis?

Agricultural biodiversity is

commonly seen as a source

of traits that professional

breeders can use to create

improved crop varieties and

livestock breeds. This will continue

to be important, but there is so

much more that agricultural

biodiversity can deliver

Agricultural biodiversity, in the form of a diverse diet rich in traditional foods, can help improve nutrition and health.

Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International.

��Special Report ��

for fertilizers based on expensive fossil fuels. Diverse farming systems, and the specific use of crops and livestock to add fertility to the soil, are proven ways of boosting productivity without involving cash for inputs.

Another crucial need is for nutrition, and not just calories. The global trend towards simpler diets based on refined carbohydrates and fats has been accompanied by a rise in chronic non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, and more than two billion people, most of them young women and children, suffer from malnutrition. Agricultural diversity underpins dietary diversity, which delivers better nutrition and greater health. Healthier people are more productive. The benefits multiply.

Yet another benefit of agricultural biodiversity is that it buffers variations in yield. Total harvests may be lower in a diverse production system, but they are more stable from year to year. This suits small farmers in rural areas, who seek to minimize risk—ensuring that there is some food for their families—rather than to maximize production.

To address the needs of the poorest people in marginal areas we need intensification without simplification. Increased local production will reduce some of the impact of higher transport costs. It will deliver more stable harvests, with local control over inputs and costs, and thus provide an opportunity for economic development. There are virtuous circles to be exploited, in which a greater use of agricultural biodiversity creates multiple

benefits that reinforce one another. It is imperative that agricultural research and development embrace these opportunities in addition to the more capital-intensive solutions that will be of most use in advanced farming systems.

If high food prices are here to stay, as most experts seem to think, then we need to change the way we look at agricultural research and development. Business as usual will not solve unusual

problems, and in particular it tends to ignore the needs of the vast number of poor subsistence farmers in environmentally fragile areas that are unsuited to the usual model of agricultural intensification. It is time to give agricultural biodiversity—and the poorest farmers—a proper chance.

By Emile Frison, Director General,

Bioversity InternationalC

Agricultural biodiversity can help boost the productivity and resilience of agricultural systems, providing more food for the world's growing population.

“We now spend nearly 100% of our salary on food,” Azza Abdulwahab, an Egyptian living in Cairo, told BBC News in June. Azza is only one of many Egyptians struggling to make ends meet as the global food crisis continues to unfold. This crisis prompted 40 Heads of State, 100 high-level ministers and 60 non-governmental and civil society organizations to come together at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) headquarters in Rome, Italy, for a three-day conference in June. Their objective: to consider the pressing issue of food security in a world dominated by rising food prices, energy shortages and climate change.

With the global population expected to hit the 9 billion mark by mid-century, world agricultural production will have to double by 2030 in order to meet the

growing demand for food, according to the UN. The food crisis is believed to have pushed 100 million more people into hunger worldwide—up from 850 million two years ago—with poor people in developing countries bearing the brunt. According to experts, food bills in some countries have doubled over the past year.

UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, told delegates that high food prices offered a chance to finally address the ongoing problem of access to food for the world’s poor.

“The threats are obvious to us all. Yet this crisis also presents us with an opportunity,” he said. “While we must respond immediately to high food prices, it is important that our longer-term focus is on improving world food security.”

Although the high-level conference did not call for financial pledges, it did prompt a number of contributions from countries including Italy, France, Spain and Japan and from organizations such as the African Development Bank. These will allow organizations such as the World Food Programme and the FAO to provide assistance to countries most in need. But perhaps the conference’s greatest

achievement was to draw the world’s attention to agriculture and its role in sustainable development.

“While there was a lot that governments could not agree on, such as trade agreements and biofuels, two things were mentioned in almost every statement: the need for humanitarian aid and the need to invest more in agricultural research and development,” said Emile Frison, Director General of Bioversity International. Frison attended the conference on behalf of the Alliance of CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research) Centres and called on delegates for a greater investment in pro-poor agricultural research as a longer-term solution to the global food crisis.

The declaration adopted by delegates at the end of the conference lists short, medium, and long-term actions for dealing with the food crisis. For the medium and long term, the declaration points out that “it is essential to address the fundamental question of how to increase the resilience of present food production systems to challenges posed by climate change.”

“The Declaration says that ‘maintaining biodiversity is key to sustaining future production performance’,”

Frison said. “I’d go further than that. We need to make much greater use of agricultural biodiversity today.”

“The farming systems of poor people in marginal lands can become more productive and more resilient in the face of external pressures like climate change,” he continued. “That will take research, and that means additional investment.”

World leaders consider linked problems of food, energy and climate change

Perhaps the conference’s

greatest achievement

was to draw the world’s attention

to agriculture and its role in

sustainable development

Delegates at the high-level conference on food security called for more investment in agricultural research and development.

For more information, contact Jeremy Cherfas,Bioversity International j.cherfas@cgiar.org

To read the full declaration, visit www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/foodclimate/HLCdocs/declaration-E.pdf

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the food crisis offered an important opportunity for finding long-term solutions for world food security.

The Pacific Islands region has been hard hit by the recent spike in food prices. Many countries in this remote region, particularly the atolls and smaller islands with limited land available, rely on imported foods. But the cost of importing foods has rocketed over the past year to the dismay of consumers and governments alike. For the Pacific Island countries, the answer to the rising cost of food could lie in a return to local food systems.

Farmers throughout the ages have relied on the vast diversity of agricultural plants available to respond to various challenges. And the demands on this diversity will be even greater as the need for food grows and agriculture strives to become more productive in the face of climatic change. Crop diversity has to satisfy the usual parameters of taste and yield, and at the same time must provide varieties tolerant of and resistant to a range of new stresses, the nature and intensity of which are at this stage relatively unpredictable.

These new challenges point to the need to look beyond the ‘standard’ food crops and to consider other, less-well-known, local food crops. These so-called ‘neglected and underused’ crops have been largely ignored because of their lack of importance in wealthy markets, despite their often high yields and nutritious qualities. But they could very well become the crops of the future.

The food crisis presents the Pacific with the opportunity to strengthen local food production and to improve the conservation and use of crop diversity, enabling countries to become more self-reliant. At the same time, increasing local food production and promoting local food consumption

provides an opportunity to address the alarming increase in lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease that now afflict people in many countries in the Pacific. This increase in disease is directly related to a shift in diet, from local foods rich in nutrients to a diet based on imported foods rich in refined carbohydrates, sugars and fats.

One of the greatest challenges facing a return to local food systems is climate change. Although we have an idea of the changes that global warming will bring, we have no indication of the frequency or intensity of those changes. We have to be prepared to manage droughts, high temperatures, waterlogging and, in the case of atolls and low-lying areas, salt intrusion. Pests and diseases will also change, both in their nature and intensity of infestation. Crop diversity can help provide a solution to these problems, by enabling farmers and breeders to develop varieties with resistance to new pests and diseases and that are able to withstand extreme conditions, such as drought or waterlogging.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), based in Suva, Fiji, is actively supporting practical adaptation measures in

its member countries and territories. For example, the SPC Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees (CePaCT), which houses a collection of crops and trees of importance to the region, is working to ensure that the diversity of local crops such as taro, yam, sweet potato, banana, cassava, breadfruit and traditional vegetables is maintained. It is also working to build a ‘climate-ready’ collection that will be accessible to farmers in all of SPC’s 22 member countries. This collection will consist of local crops and varieties selected because they will provide farmers in this region with the traits needed to manage climate change, such as the ability to withstand drought and tolerate salt. In the future, SPC hopes to explore the evaluation and development of local crops that are less well-known to add to the climate-ready collection.

Crop diversity is an essential component of the toolkit that farmers need to manage the challenges of the 21st century. Through CePaCT, the SPC aims to ensure that this toolkit is well equipped.

By Mary Taylor, Secretariat of the Pacific Community

Crop diversity: a tool for managing the food crisis in the Pacific

The challenges posed by climate

change point to the need to

look beyond the ‘standard’ food

crops, and to consider other,

less-well-known, local food crops

Cassava for sale in a local market in the Solomon islands.

For more information, contact Mary Taylor MaryT@spc.int

Mangoes herald the arrival of summer in India. From April through June, stacks of the aromatic fruit fill the shelves of local markets. On every corner, street vendors sell thirst-quenching mango juice to city dwellers looking to relieve themselves from the summer heat. In Europe and more recently the US, consumers wait eagerly for the seasonal delicacy to appear in their supermarkets.

But mango enthusiasts should brace themselves for some bad news. India’s

mangoes are becoming rarer and less sweet as changes in weather affect harvests across the country. In 2007, as many as 3 million tonnes of mangoes were wiped out by a particularly severe winter. Forecasts already predict that the 2008 crop will be down by 20% over last year.

According to producers, cooler weather is also responsible for the fruit’s declining sweetness. “Mangoes need heat to ripen. With global warming affecting weather changes across

the globe, the crop has been hit hard,” said Insram Ali, president of the Mango Growers’ Association of India.

Reality hit home during the annual agricultural mango diversity festival, ‘Mango Mela’, held in Bangalore at the beginning of June. Only 20 varieties were on display, compared with more than 100 varieties in 2007.

Those who will suffer most are the hundreds of thousands of smallholder farmers who depend on

mango for their livelihoods. In Uttar Pradesh, the second largest mango-producing state in India, farmers estimate that as much as half of their crop was wiped out by unseasonable storms in April and May. In western India, heavy rains have increased the incidence of pests, leading to further losses.

Whether this is part of a long-term trend or not remains to be seen, but Indian farmers are already bracing themselves for a precarious future and lobbying the government to insure them against the effects of unpredictable weather on their mango crops.

Based on the article ‘Climate change blamed as

mango harvest goes sour in India’, by Rhys Blakely

and Shivani Khanna, Times Online, 9 June 2008.

India's mango harvest sours

Those who will suffer most are

the hundreds of thousands

of smallholder farmers who

depend on mango for their

livelihoods

India's mangoes are becoming rarer and less sweet as a result of climate change.

Grace Tan/istock photo

�0Special Report ��

Soaring rice prices are forcing Liberians to abandon their traditional rice dishes for imported spaghetti. Rice is a staple food in Liberia, but since 2007 the price has more than doubled as a result of rising import costs. Ordinary citizens are increasingly finding it difficult to afford to eat traditional dishes such as jollof, with its rice and tomato base.

According to BBC News, Liberia imports more than 90% of its rice from the US and Asia. However, increased domestic demand is forcing rice-exporting countries to limit sales. In Asia, rice production is increasing too slowly to meet the growing demands of the international community. As a result, the Indian Supreme Court recently endorsed a ban on

the export of non-Basmati rice in light of inflation and an impending food crisis within its borders.

Many nations in West Africa count rice as a staple food, despite importing the majority of their supply. Until the civil war started in 1989, Liberians imported only 30% of their rice. However, Liberia now specializes in rubber production and the food crisis has prompted the Agriculture Minister, Dr Christ Toe, to encourage Liberians to start growing rice again.

The cost of rice has long been a politically-charged and sensitive topic in Liberia; a coup in the early 1980s was sparked by rising rice prices.

The BBC News interviewed a Liberian vendor who was selling 40 bags of rice a day just a year ago. Today, because of high costs, he is lucky to sell even ten. As a result, upstart spaghetti shacks using millet-based spaghetti imported from the US are finding substantial profit by providing relatively cheap and filling meals. To encourage his customers to eat the strange new food, one chef prepares pasta dishes with traditional African chilli peppers and cuts the spaghetti into small pieces so that it is easier to consume.

With the food crisis hitting the developing world severely, many nations like Liberia will be forced to give up the foods they are accustomed to and turn towards less familiar dishes.

Based on ‘Liberians drop rice for spaghetti’, by Kate Thomas,

BBC News, 22 April 2008.

High prices force Liberians from rice to pasta diet

The cost of rice has long been

a politically-charged and

sensitive topic in Liberia; a coup in the early 1980s

was sparked by rising rice prices

Rising food prices are forcing Liberians to abandon their traditional rice dishes for cheaper alternatives.

G.Pirozzi/Panos Pictures

The French’s love for snails is notorious. According to BBC News, France consumes 14 000 tonnes of snails every year. This year, however, the French are left staring blankly at the menu. The French Federation of Preserved Food Industries has warned that prices will spike due to a lacklustre 2008 snail harvest, causing the French to tighten their belts.

Traditional French dishes such as Escargots à la bourguignonne, prepared with garlic, butter and parsley, have not featured native gastropods for years. Today, 99% of snails eaten in France come from central and eastern European countries like Poland and Bulgaria.

“Our escargots actually come from Poland,” said Jacky Pommier, organizer of an annual snail festival in Burgundy. “It’s a shame they’re not from France, but with all the pesticides in the ground here and intensive agriculture, there are no more snails.”

But as economies in eastern Europe develop, France’s major snail suppliers are leaving snail hunting behind for better-paid jobs. The result has been a shortfall in the 2008 snail harvest.

Raising snails is a labour-intensive job. Only certain snails are edible, and to bring out their full flavour farmers must feed them

sweet foods, such as basil, and collect them by hand. When workers are less inclined to gather snails, the companies buying the snails must raise salaries and, consequently, raise prices.

Escargot is not the only traditional French dish being imported. Frog’s legs, another national delicacy, now come from Indonesia,

and even Russia is seeking to tap into the frog’s legs market. France has long been unable to meet its own demands for this culinary special. Similar to the native snail plight, native frog populations have been damaged by over-hunting and pesticide use.

French escargot imports slow to snail’s pace

As economies in eastern

Europe develop, France’s major snail suppliers

are leaving snail hunting behind for better-paid

jobsEscargots à la bourguignonne may become a dish of the past as snail harvests drop.

According to a report released by the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), a government-funded agency, households in the UK toss 6.7 million tonnes of food a year, a third of all food purchased by Britons on an annual basis. The majority of the ‘garbage’, a remarkable 61%, consists of still edible food. That amounts to the disposal of an average 70 kg of edible food per person every year. The report found that families with school-age children and single-person households were the most profligate.

“If we are to get food prices down, we must do more to deal with unnecessary demand—such as all

of us doing more to cut food waste,” said Prime Minister Gordon Brown. It’s not only food that is being tossed, but money as well. WRAP discovered that each household was losing US$840 annually because of wasted edible food, around US$16 a week. Compounding the problem, most of the food that is thrown away finds its way to landfills, where it contributes to the production of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with high global warming potential.

The food item most wasted in the UK is the potato: 359 000 tonnes of potatoes go uneaten each year, nearly 50% of them thrown away whole and untouched.

The WRAP report, ‘The Food We Waste’, noted that a quarter of the discarded food is still in its packaging. Most of the waste comes as a result of overbuying by consumers.

“What shocked me the most was the cost of food waste at a time of rising food prices and generally a tighter pull on our purse strings,” said Liz Goodwin, Chief Executive of WRAP. “It highlights that this is an economic and social issue, as well as about how well we understand the value of our food.”

Information drawn from the WRAP report,

‘The Food We Waste’.

Rubbishing (good) food

A quarter of the food we throw away is still in its packaging. According to a recent study

overbuying is one of the main causes of food waste.

For more information, see www.wrap.org.uk/retail/food_waste/research/the_food_we_waste.html

Most of the food that is

thrown away finds its way to landfills, where

it contributes to the production

of methane, a potent

greenhouse gas with high

global warming potential

Like many urban working mums, Lila Das Gupta finds that both money and time are in short supply these days. Rising food and fuel prices and a volatile job market are making it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Now, only ten minutes away from her home in central London, Lila has carved out a space for herself, one that will help lower the family’s food bills and improve their nutrition too: a council allotment where she grows her own fruit and vegetables.

“With a busy life filled with children and work, having somewhere to get away from it all keeps me sane,” said Das Gupta. It also helps to address her concerns about the quality and cost of the food she gives her children.

Meanwhile in Oakland, in the US, Esperanza Pallana enthuses about the multiple benefits of growing her own food. “There are so many things I like about it, besides just having a food supply. It is like magic to go out in the backyard and get eggs that are fresh and delicious and to have a source of honey,” she said. “It’s so satisfying when I sit down to a meal and 75% is straight out of the backyard.” Pallana’s new passion has evolved into a full time job. She now works for Urban Sprouts, a

non-profit school gardens organization in the US.

A combination of factors, including rising food prices, growing concerns about the environment and an increasing awareness about what goes into our food, has led to a huge increase in the number of people in northern Europe and the US who are growing their own fruits and vegetables. For the first time in decades, vegetable seeds are outselling flower seeds. And the main proponents of this new trend are women, in particular young urban mothers who, in growing numbers, are applying for allotments or converting their back gardens into vegetable patches. An allotment is a piece of land assigned by a local council to allow people to grow their own food. Allotments were introduced into the UK during the First World War.

Allan Rees, Chair of the National Society of Allotments and Leisure Gardeners in the UK, said that demand for allotments was far outstripping supply. “In Sheffield, there’s a waiting list of 1465, it’s 600 in Leeds; there’s a 5-year wait in Swindon,” he said. “We have particularly noticed that there are a lot of young women applying for them because they want to feed their families with food they know has been grown properly.”

The main concerns driving this trend may be food costs and health, but there is a social element too. “People get to know their neighbours. It’s not just about eating; it’s about exercise as well. It’s a lifestyle choice,” explained Lucy Halsall, Gardening Editor of the UK’s Amateur Gardening magazine.

The new trend could have unintended benefits for plant

diversity by providing a safe place for it to thrive. “Serving twisted purple carrots or near-black tomatoes would have been met with raised eyebrows a few years ago. But not now,” said Craig Drever, Editor of Grow Your Own magazine in the UK. “Shop-bought vegetables are often limited to a few sub-par varieties chosen for their shelf-life rather than their taste. The benefits to anyone who is green minded or who has more than one working taste bud are obvious.”

Based on ‘Forget flowers…fruit and veg are in season for young gardeners’, by Caroline Davies, The Observer, 18 May 2008 and ‘Will cities soon be able to feed themselves?’ by

Emily Wilson, Alternet.org, 2 October 2008.

Going Green: city gardening gets a boost

Learn how to make the most of growing your own food. Tips and advice from cookery writer and amateur vegetable grower, Sophie Grigson on the BBC: www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/mostof_growyourown.shtml\

“We have particularly

noticed that there are a lot

of young women applying for [allotments]

because they want to feed their families

with food they know has been

grown properly”

In response to the rising cost of food, many people in northern Europe and the US have begun to grow their own fruit and vegetables.

Not content with waiting for policy remedies to the global food crisis, farmers in Lesotho have been finding their own solutions. They are learning how to grow food in small raised plots known as ‘keyhole gardens’.

Lesotho is a tiny country with a population of roughly two million people. Sitting at an altitude of 1800 metres above sea level, its poor soils and extreme weather conditions—ranging from a scorching 40°C in summer to –15°C in winter—make it hard for farmers to eke out a living from their fields. Years of intensive agriculture have damaged the already thin mountain soils beyond repair, robbing

them of their nutrients and leaving Lesotho’s farmers empty handed. Forty percent of the population has been described by the UN as ‘ultra poor’ and one third is malnourished.

As a result, this already fragile country is likely to be very badly hit by climate change and the unravelling food and energy crises. “The last summer season, most of our tractors couldn’t go to the fields because of the cost of diesel. Now that the price has doubled, we’re not expecting any to be able to go,” explained Mr Efraim Lehata, Lesotho’s Deputy Minister for Agriculture and Food Security.

Enter the keyhole garden. What makes keyhole gardens so special is that they are extremely fertile and easy to maintain, making it possible to ensure a harvest of nutritious vegetables all year round. The garden beds are encased in rock walls that are about 2 metres in diameter and raised to waist-height, making it easy for anyone, including the sick and the elderly, to tend to them. The garden is layered with tin cans for iron, ash for potassium and mulch. Layers of straw help the garden to retain water.

Together these ingredients provide the nutrients needed to ensure a healthy harvest all year round. And because there is no need to tread on the soil or to turn it over once or twice a year, as with regular gardens, the soil is able to retain its structure and fertility over time. The rock walls protect the soil from erosion and the garden structures are compact enough to turn the tiniest bit of land into a productive plot capable of supplying enough food to feed an entire family. The gardens get their name because the path leading to the round garden bed inside the stone structure looks like a keyhole when seen from above.

Ntsie Tlali from CARE, the non-governmental

organization that helped introduce keyhole gardens into Lesotho, believes they are revolutionary. The gardens not only supply needy families with food, they are also helping to diversify diets and improve nutrition by allowing families to grow a wider array of vegetables than they did before.

Mr Lehata acknowledged that the gardens alone will not transform Lesotho, “but we’ve been really surprised by just how well they’ve worked,” he said.

Adapted from ‘Lesotho gardens relieve food crisis’,

by Peter Greste, BBC News, 3 June 2008.

� keyhole view on the food crisis

“The last summer season, most

of our tractors couldn’t go to the

fields because of the cost of

diesel. Now that the price has

doubled, we’re not expecting any

to be able to go”

For more information, visit www.care-in-africa.org/content/default.asp

Keyhole gardens get their name from the path leading to the round garden bed inside the stone structure, which looks like a keyhole when seen from above.

Want to make your own keyhole garden? Send a Cow, a UK-based charity that is involved in supporting the construction of keyhole gardens in Lesotho, has a step-by-step guide that you can download from the internet:

www.cowfiles.com/resources/pdf/How_to_make_a_Keyhole_Garden_Lesotho_style.pdf

Ethiopia was already ravaged by famine when the food price crisis hit. Ethiopians speak of a ‘green drought’, where the land is full of brilliant green shoots but produces no viable food. This happens when the rains fail and few crops are

planted. But now Ethiopia’s hungry have even more than the lack of rain to contend with. The rising cost of food is contributing to what has already been recognized by aid agencies around the world as a major humanitarian crisis in the country.

Injera is the country’s most famous food. The grey sponge-like flat bread is made from teff, a fine white grain indigenous to the Horn of Africa. It is eaten with a variety of stews by people throughout Ethiopia. In the past year, teff has doubled in price. In 2007, it was approximately US$31 a quintal (100 kilos); now it is US$67. The poor can’t afford to buy the grain, mill it and bake it. So they often buy injera ready-made. But a piece of injera costs one birr—twice as much as it cost one year ago. The price of cooking oil has also gone up by a third in the space of one year and other staples like sorghum have also doubled in price.

The urban poor in the capital, Addis Ababa, have been severely affected by the food price crisis. Many can no longer afford traditional staple foods. A consumer co-op headed by retired Colonel Alemayhu, however, provides a small respite from soaring prices. The co-op, in the suburb of Kera near Addis Ababa, is supported by Concern Worldwide, an international NGO dedicated to helping the world’s poor. The co-op buys food in bulk, ideally directly from farmers around Addis Ababa, and sells it to its members at significantly reduced prices. As well as

teff, the co-op sells maize, chickpea, sugar and barley.

“One quintal of teff costs 650 birr (US$67) from the merchants,” said Colonel Alemayhu. “We can sell it at 625 birr (US$64). That is a meaningful contribution; 25 birr makes a big difference.”

Unfortunately, the co-op faces the same problems as its members. Teff is produced by small farmers, who are vulnerable to the decreased level of rainfall, and many farmers are turning to more viable cash crops, such as coffee. Despite limited supply from producers, however, the co-op is dedicated to keeping its prices low, and its organizers continue to make an effort to outbid the food crisis.

Based on ‘Rising food prices – Feeling the pinch’,

Reliefweb, 23 May 2008.

Facing the food crisis: Ethiopian co-op gives hope

For more information, visit www.concern.net/news-and-features/features/a1000198/Rising-food-prices---feeling-the-pinch.html

… the co-op is dedicated

to keeping teff prices low, and

its organizers continue to

make an effort to outbid the

food crisis

A woman waits in line with her malnourished baby to receive treatment at a local clinic in southern Ethiopia.

��Special Report C

In 2007, bee populations in the US and the UK began to decline in mystifyingly large numbers. Colony Collapse Disorder (known as Mary Celeste Syndrome in the UK after a mystery ship found unmanned and under sail in 1872) especially affects honeybees and bumblebees; some US beekeepers have lost close to 90% of their bee populations, and during 2007, the total US bee population fell by 30%. Possible explanations have included parasites and unhealthy cell phone radio signals. To make matters worse, like humans, bees are also facing a food crisis.

According to a BBC news report, a decline in suitable flowers (caused largely by habitat loss) is increasingly forcing bumblebees to feed on the sugary secretions of aphids in an attempt to find substitutes for nectar. This is not a new practice—bumblebees have been known to feed on aphid secretions in the past—but the frequency of such behaviour has sharply increased, suggesting that traditional food sources for bees are disappearing. The aphids’ secretions do not contain the protein that bees need to stay healthy and create healthy communities. Bees can

only get their protein from pollen. It is speculated that the phenomenon is another possible cause of Colony Collapse Disorder.

Nearly 20 000 species of bees have been identified worldwide, but just one type, the western honeybee, makes up the majority of bees raised by US and UK beekeepers. But what does it matter if bee populations crash? Well, for a start the survival of bee populations is essential to modern agriculture, which has evolved to depend on the two dozen or so bee species that humans have raised successfully. Without bees to pollinate them, certain crops, ranging from apples to almonds, are at risk. On a global scale, 70% of crops require animal pollinators, but even self-pollinating crops such as tomatoes and eggplants produce higher-quality fruit when pollinated by insects.

The western honeybee is especially important to agricultural development because it is a floral generalist, which means that it feeds on almost anything that blooms.

Based on ‘Bees seeking “sugary” garden pest’, by

Steven McKenzie, BBC News, 27 June 2008.

Food crisis hits the bee world

The total bee population in the US fell by 30% in 2007.

Pollinating services provided by bees are vital to agriculture.

On a global scale, 70%

of crops require animal

pollinators, but even self-

pollinating crops such as tomatoes

and eggplants produce higher-

quality fruit when pollinated by

insects

GlossaryAccession: A sample of a crop variety or wild relative collected at a specific location and time.

Agrobiodiversity (or agricultural biodiversity): Biodiversity that contributes to food and agricultural production.

Agro-ecosystems: Ecosystems that produce food via farming under human guidance.

Biodiversity: The total variability within and among species of all living organisms and their habitats.

Climate change: A change of climate that can be directly or indirectly attributed to human activity and that is in addition to natural climate variability over comparable time periods.

Cultigen: Cultivated plant, such as the banana, not known to have a wild or uncultivated counterpart.

Cultivar: Shorthand for cultivated variety.

CGIAR: The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, a strategic alliance of countries, international and regional organizations and private foundations supporting 15 international agricultural research centres.

Desertification: Land degradation in arid, semi-arid and dry subhumid areas resulting from various factors including climatic variability and human actions.

Ecosystem: An ecological system formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their physical environment.

Ex situ conservation: Conservation of a plant, animal or other organism outside of its original or natural habitat.

Genebank: Facility where crop diversity is stored in the form of seeds, pollen, in vitro culture or DNA, or in the case of a field genebank, as plants growing in the field. Genebanks can also be used to store the genetic resources of animals, microbes and other elements of biodiversity.

Genetic diversity: The genetic variation present in a population or species.

Genetic resources: Genetic material of plants, animals and other organisms that is of value for present and future generations of people.

Genotypes: 1. The genetic constitution of an organism. 2. A group of organisms with similar genetic constitutions.

Germplasm: A set of genotypes that can be conserved or used.

In situ conservation: Conservation of plants, animals or other organisms in the areas where they developed their distinctive properties, i.e. in the wild or in farmers’ fields.

Landrace: Farmer-developed variety of a crop plant or animal that is adapted to local environmental conditions.

Micronutrient: A dietary element, such as a vitamin or mineral, that is required in minute amounts for the proper growth and metabolism of a living organism.

Permaculture: A system of low input agriculture based on a mixed farming system of crops, trees and small livestock.

Taxon: A group or category, at any level, in a system for classifying plants or animals.

Wild relative: A non-cultivated species that is more or less closely related to a crop or livestock species (usually in the same genus).

Bioversity InternationalVia dei Tre Denari 472/a00057 MaccareseRome, ItalyTel: +39 06 6118 1Fax: +39 06 61979Email: bioversity@cgiar.orgWeb: www.bioversityinternational.org

Bioversity International is the operating name of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI).

Supported by the CGIAR.

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