What price agro-biodiversity?
Much has been said and written about the value of maintaining biodiversity
for the preservation of genetic pools for the future benefit of farmers in
general. But less has been proposed about incentives to persuade individual
farmers to practise conservation of traditional landraces and breeds, in the
face of modern higher yielding lines that offer immediate advantages.
An international conference in Lusaka, Zambia in
September attracted over 80 participants from SADC member countries, and from
Cameroon, Ethiopia and Kenya, to discuss incentive measures to enhance
sustainable biodiversity practices. There were also participants from Germany,
India, Japan, Netherlands and UK.
Most smallholder farmers, especially women, still cling to their traditional varieties and value them for particular attributes, according to Dr Edward Zulu of the SADC Seed Security Network/Seed Control Institute. And research by Elizabeth Cromwell of the UK's Overseas Development Institute also demonstrates that such farmers try to minimise risk by growing a wide range of crops and varieties in order to increase stability and improve productivity. For example, in Zimbabwe 85% of farmers questioned wanted to maintain or increase the number of crops and varieties they grow, and in Malawi farmers ranked crop diversification and access to seed as the top two out of 15 indicators of sustainable farming. However, while poorer farmers may be particularly reliant on agricultural biodiversity, they have the greatest difficulty maintaining it on-farm.
Dr Zulu instanced droughts as having a major detrimental impact, with farmers losing their traditional seeds and receiving in their stead emergency relief seed of non-local varieties. Regassa Feyissa of Ethiopia confirmed that dependency on introduced varieties is inevitably at the expense of landraces previously grown by farmers: in some regions of high crop diversification the native barley is being displaced by increasing acreages planted to new commercial varieties.
Community seed banks
However, Ethiopia, which has ample experience of drought and emergency relief food and seed, has developed a system for safeguarding traditional varieties. It is the community seed bank system, which includes low-cost local facilities that are owned and managed by the farmers themselves. The banks are managed the Crop Conservation Associations (CCA), which were established for on-farm management of crop diversity. Significantly, the curators of the CCAs are elder men and women (involvement of women having increased to over 21%), who fully decide on the activities of the Associations. Selection of varieties to be conserved is usually conducted by these elder men and women, in consultation with scientists. A mechanism links these local facilities to the central seed reserve and germplasm repository at community level and to the National genebank. The central seed reserves provide a backup to the local seed networks and are crucial in ensuring sustainable supply of locally adapted seeds.
The importance of community action was also stressed by Elizabeth Cornwell, who pointed out that a whole community's knowledge and capacities must be harnessed for the good of all, and that everyone must have access to the genetic resources conserved. Turning to animal genetic conservation, she said that use and conservation of animal genetic resources by farmers had hardly been developed. And, because animals are often kept in communal herds, working with 'key' persons may not be sufficient and any supporting initiatives may need to involve the whole community.
On marketing, the conference concluded that identifying niche markets for traditional varieties and breeds could add value and increase income for farmers - a major incentive. Taste, colour and texture of crop and animal products are all qualities that can be 'sold' to the consumer, but farmers need to be trained to be more aware of the characterization, potential for quality enhancement, product development and labelling. In conclusion, farmers cannot be expected to undertake maintenance of agro-biodiversity alone, they need training, credit and possibly tax incentives from government. Successful entrepreneurs recognize their vested interest in maintaining the old and increasingly rare landraces and breeds that comprise agro-biodiversity.
Article based on information and soundbites submitted by Chris Kakunta, freelance journalist, Zambia
