V is for Varieties
Date: 10 October 2014
“Since the 1900s, some 75 percent of plant genetic diversity has been lost as farmers worldwide have left their multiple local varieties and landraces for genetically uniform, high-yielding varieties.” FAO agrobiodiversity document
Industrial agriculture and the practice of growing the same crop year after year (mono cropping), has been responsible for a huge loss of traditional plant varieties and animal breeds around the world. Around 95% of our food is provided for by only 30 crops, and that merely four of them (rice, wheat, maize, potatoes) provide almost 60% of our food needs. Given that so few plant species account for so much of our food needs, it is vital that we maintain as many varieties of each of these species as possible.
And yet we are losing plant varieties at an alarming rate. For example 1,500 rice varieties were lost in Indonesia in the space of 15 years (1975 to 1990). When the 2009 hurricane in West Bengal turned everyone’s fields into salty ponds, only a handful of farmers were still preserving salt-tolerant varieties of rice on their farms. Even the most high-yielding modern varieties of rice were useless on these farmers’ salty soils: it was the old traditional rice varieties that were needed.
In Tanzania, a drought in 1991/1992 forced an NGO to distribute 40 tonnes of an improved variety of sorghum seeds. The introduction of this modern variety of sorghum was extremely successful but has resulted in the loss of local varieties. In the village of Mkulula for example, around 90% of farmers’ fields were planted with this modern variety of sorghum, with only a few of the local varieties still grown on the remaining 10%. So in the short term farmers have been able to increase their yields, but their dependency on a single variety of sorghum puts them at risk if this variety suffers from a disease or pest. Agricultural sustainability is about thinking of the long-term, not just short-term yield increases. Preserving the diversity of plant and animal varieties is of fundamental importance for the long-term sustainability of our food system.
Photo: A variety of legume seeds. Credit: International Centre for Tropical Agriculture
The A-Z of Food Sovereignty in Africa shows the positive alternatives to corporate-led agriculture. A new letter was posted each day in the lead up to World Food Day arrived on 16 October 2014.
Africa’s small-scale food producers already know how to produce enough food sustainably to feed themselves but the political and economic rules which govern the food system are set against them. These rules are written by and for multinational companies and political elites, in support of a global food system that benefits them rather than the millions of smallholders and family farmers who produce the food and get little in return.
