Yesterday was Terra Madre Day, which celebrates local food traditions and agrobiodiversity. Today, the Landscapes Blog explores an example of this in practices. Landscapes Initiative Co-Organizer, Bioversity International discusses new research on how to support farmers and local institutions in the conservation and use of traditional agricultural biodiversity. The framework presented help to bring activities to expand genetic variety within crops to the level of farmers and communities. The post was originally on the Bioversity website.
A monumental collation of experimental evidence for the first time offers answers to the question: how can farmers make better use of crop diversity. Making use of more than 15 years of collaboration with national partners, Devra Jarvis and her colleagues at Bioversity International have created what they call an heuristic framework to help farmers and researchers conserve and use traditional crop varieties.
In essence, the researchers looked at the constraints farmers face and how to overcome them. For example, it may be that the diversity farmers need just doesn’t exist in their production system, or if it does, is in too short supply to be sufficient. This problem of availability is distinct from the problem of access, where the genetic resources are available, but farmers for one reason or another cannot get hold of it. A third constraint concerns value, where the farmers do not use diversity because they do not believe it would deliver any benefits. Somewhat distinct is the situation where although farmers do value their traditional varieties, they don’t actually use them because market or institutional failures do not allow them to benefit.
Using the framework, researchers would work closely with farmer communities and local institutions to determine how much diversity exists in the system and how it might be used more effectively, and this joint analysis pinpoints the specific constraints that need to be overcome. For each constraint, Jarvis and her colleagues offer a series of actions, backed by published papers, that might help. For example, if traditional varieties are no longer present in the local farming system, they could be re-introduced from a genebank collection. Or if the necessary diversity was never present, it might be brought in from farmers in similar environments and integrated into the local seed system.
Some of the suggested actions, for example establishing a community seed bank, are actually solutions to several problems. A community seed bank can address all four constraints, by making seed available and enhancing access at the same time as providing information and support needed to boost the value of diversity and delivering benefits to the farmers.
“This is a crucial element in the heuristic framework,” Jarvis said. “If you analyze any of the broad categories of constraints, several different actions will almost certainly be presented. Which ones work best will have to be decided in collaboration with the farmer communities and local institutions, and will succeed best if the farming community has the knowledge and leadership to evaluate the benefits and then implement the recommended actions.”
The framework is very much a tool for farmers and researchers to use together. A second element that it stresses, in addition to collaboration, is the importance of strengthening the capacity of farmers to play a more prominent role in the management of their resources.
“Genetic diversity is one of the few resources over which cash-poor farmers can exercise some measure of control, and is a vital element in their well-being,” said Toby Hodgkin, another of the paper’s authors.
The authors stress that the framework, as published, is very much a “work in progress,” which will be expanded and amended as further information becomes available. They caution that each set of on-the-ground circumstances is unique, and actions will need to be adapted and tailored to fit. Nevertheless, three general conclusions have emerged. First, researchers need to work with farmers to develop an understanding of how much diversity exists in a system and how it is maintained and managed. Secondly, analysis will inevitably lead to more than one complementary actions that could support greater conservation and use of diversity. Thirdly, success will depend on local knowledge and institutions and the leadership of farmers and their communities.
“We hope the framework will encourage workers in the field to see traditional varieties as the valuable asset they are to improve production and resilience in farmers’ fields,” Jarvis said, “and look forward to seeing reports about how the approach works out on the ground.”
Note: The paper, ‘An heuristic framework for identifying multiple ways of supporting the conservation and use of traditional crop varieties within the agricultural production system’, published in Critical Reviews in Plant Science (vol 30, pp 125–176), is available for free download until 31 December 2012.
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