You might say we were risk averse. When I was growing up, the 5-generation family farm had cows (milk and beef), pigs, chickens and guinea fowl, fruit trees and berries. The main crops were cotton, maize, sorghum and soybean, rotated, but there were also vegetables and flowers. And there was a tractor and there were mules – each providing insurance in case the other broke down.
There was no reliable safety net then. Bad decisions led to hard times. We didn’t “bet the farm” on any one crop or strategy.
Oddly for farm folk, agro-conservationists of all stripes continue to squabble amongst themselves over how to conserve. Should the diversity of our agricultural crops be conserved ex-situ in genebanks or in-situ on farms and in natural habitats?
A majority employs the word “or”. It seems only a less vocal minority can imagine and actually promote a different formulation: ex-situ and in-situ.
Long ago Mark Twain warned “If you ever find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause, and reflect.” Twain was a master at poking holes in the mass psychology of folly. Perhaps he was on to something.
No single strategy for conserving crop diversity is perfect or fool-proof. Something can always go wrong. As an organization, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is constitutionally focused on ex-situ conservation. It supports genebank collections. It believes that this approach to conservation has great merit. Rigorous protocols can be established. Research on the diversity is facilitated. And those needing the diversity – for plant breeding, for example – can locate and acquire it easily, across borders, and according to recognized norms.
But we are not averse to pointing out and seeking to correct the pitfalls of ex-situ conservation, such as the damage that can be done when genebanks get caught in wars or suffer the ravages of persistently poor funding. To address these problems, we are building an endowment to provide sustainable funding, and we support the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Should Our Eggs be in One Basket?
The conservation of crop diversity on farms and in protected areas (for crop wild relatives) also deserves support. As 150 countries agreed at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in 1996, ex-situ and in-situ are “complementary” approaches.
Promoting in-situ conservation as an exclusive strategy has instant and visceral appeal to many well-meaning people. It seems natural. It keeps the plants outside where at least theoretically they can continue to evolve. It involves farmers, not big institutions. What’s not to like about it?
Conservation in-situ allows for continual evolution, a definite plus. But, if we promote this kind of conservation exclusively, we have to accept that even as farmers promote continued and beneficial adaptation, they can inadvertently select against and eliminate other diversity in the varieties under their care – including traits that might someday be worthwhile. As a way of promoting evolution, the in-situ approach excels; as a method for conserving what already exists, it has shortcomings.
Most in-situ conservation is secondary to production. Farms are not museums. If a farmer is conserving a unique crop variety, it is usually because he/she wants to eat or sell it in the future. This, of course is hardly a completely reliable situation. The farmer might die or move to the city. Newer, higher yielding varieties can come along and in the blink of an eye the farmer can decide to replace the old with the new. We call this “genetic erosion.” The phenomenon is well documented and on– going. Genebanks are full of samples of varieties abandoned by farmers – varieties the in-situ “system” no longer conserves.
This process can be exacerbated by biotic factors. Ug99, a new virulent strain of wheat stem rust is racing across the Near East and South Asia. Little resistance is found in existing varieties. “Conserving” non-resistant varieties, even if it’s possible, will come at a price few poor subsistence farmers will be willing or able to pay.
Loss of diversity in-situ can also occur through habitat destruction and natural disasters. Examples abound.
Then there is climate change.
In country after country, particularly in the developing world, farmers and their crops are about to experience climates not seen in the 12,000-year history of agriculture. Estimates of the likely loss of plant species this century are alarmingly high. Existing crop varieties conserved (i.e. grown) on farms will inevitably be affected too. Will these varieties be able to adapt, and adapt quickly enough, to justify continued on-farm conservation when the farmer’s livelihood depends on reliability and yield? I can imagine the answer will not always be affirmative.
Deterioration of farming conditions, and of crop yields, due to climate change will press many farmers – even in the most diversity-rich in-situ systems – to switch to different crops altogether or to new varieties bred for new and changing climates. This is hardly descriptive of a stable or completely reliable conservation system for existing varieties in the field.
Finally, we turn to the purpose of conservation of crop diversity, which is not conservation but use.
Access and availability are critical to use. Access to diversity in genebanks, however, is feasible in a way that access to diversity in farmers’ fields is not. There are millions of farmers – this is the in-situ conservation “system.” But in the race to breed varieties that will not succumb to Ug99, for example, on whose door among the millions should one knock to find the genes for resistance? The in-situ approach, impressive in what it has accomplished over time, is challenged when it comes to screening for traits and providing broad access.
An Alliance for Adaptation?
Many farmers – typically the poorest – are not adequately served by modern plant breeding programs whether public or private. Such farmers often scrape by on small plots of infertile land with low-yielding varieties. In many cases, they are growing crops for which there are few or even no trained plant breeders. That’s life for a subsistence farmer in many developing countries.
How will these farmers – and their crops – meet the challenge of climate change? As it stands now, I’m not sure they will. Where will their climate-ready varieties come from? At the moment, no one seems to be offering a credible solution. A tragedy of epic proportions is thus unfolding.
One possible response, I believe, lies in uniting in-situ and ex-situ advocates in a common cause. Let’s bring together the scientific and genetic resources of genebanks with the local knowledge and outreach of national programs and NGOs. This could provide new diversity to large numbers of farmers, empowering them to ratchet up their own indigenous selection and plant breeding efforts.
Who knows, such a joint effort might even encourage enthusiasts of the two complementary conservation strategies to become more complimentary towards each other.
Debating ex-situ/in-situ leads to strategies becoming confused with goals. As the arguments intensify “means” become “ends” in themselves. Original goals are forgotten.
Partisans in our crop diversity community are wrong when they argue that all our eggs should be placed in one basket. Good farmers – like I believe my family has been – know better. They would never have bet the farm on one crop. And they certainly wouldn’t bet the future of agriculture on one conservation strategy.
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
