20/05/2016

Dr. Shakeel Bhatti, Secretary of the International Treaty on PGRFA

Agriculture is not always the first thing people think of when they consider protecting biodiversity. Farming is too often viewed as the enemy of wildlife and nature.

But of all the plant and animal species being lost at an alarming rate, none will have a greater impact on humanity than the loss of crops. Indeed, our very survival is at stake.

Which is why the food on our plate – and where it is going to come from in the future - should be high on the list of concerns as the United Nations celebrates International Biodiversity Day on May 22.

Time is running out. Over the millennia, humans could rely on the existence of 10,000 plant species for food. But so much of this diversity has gone there are now only150 crops under cultivation. Just four of them – rice, wheat, maize and potatoes – provide around 60 percent of our food needs.

The dangers of having this narrow range of food crops is shown by the current threat hanging over the Cavendish variety of banana. They are the large ones you find in the supermarket, and they account for 47 percent of the global banana market.

Panama disease, a fungus that has already killed Gros Michel banana variety, has developed a new, deadlier strain that has already destroyed 10,000 hectares of Cavendish.

If bananas as a crop are to survive and flourish, the existing current diversity must be protected and enhanced so that suitable replacements to the Cavendish are available to farmers.

Climate change makes the situation worse still. Pests and diseases brought on by drought or flooding threatens varieties of common staples like rice and wheat and their wild relatives, important harbingers of potentially useful genetic material for plant improvement.

Agricultural diversity is therefore a precious global resource that is in high demand– but like many other natural resources – is not evenly distributed, although it is not just a question of rich and poor.

Some of the most valuable crops and traits are found in the fields of some of the poorest farmers in the world. Groundnuts, pigeon peas, lentils, cowpeas, yams, bananas and plantains, are food staples for millions. Yet they still do not get the attention they deserve from agricultural researchers. In fact, the global capacity in plant breeding –both in human, financial and infrastructure terms - has at best remained stable or even decreased according to recent research published by FAO.

This is a pity and a wasted opportunity. Both consumers and researchers benefit from the work of indigenous and local farmers who have conserved and adapted their traditional crops and their unique properties in their communities for generations.  Many of these crops hold genetic properties that more widely grown varieties can use to adapt to the changing production conditions in agriculture.

Given the time and investment necessary to breed new plant varieties, it is important that farmers and plant breeders from the public and the private sector can quickly pinpoint where in the world the genetic material for particular traits they are trying to breed into a plant is found.

Some of this material is stored in in more than 1,750 genebanks, from a small university collection to large international enterprises.  And many of them are now back-up with the Seed Vault of Svalbald in Norway.  They are distributed around the world and together hold around 7.4 million accessions. The largest 130 of these genebanks each hold more than 10.000 accessions.

But much more material is found in farmer’s fields mainly in developing countries, where there are seeds that have learnt to adapt naturally to changes in temperature, rain and drought and also to pests and diseases, caused by global warming What it is more, farmers hold the knowledge associated with the growth of these crop seeds.

So as well as giving access to is equally important, therefore, that smaller farmers networks and breeders also have access to this valuable data and knowledge so they can continue with their priceless work of on farm breeding in natural conditions.  These genetic resources are not needed for a new perfume, a miraculous hair grow lotion or an industrial oil, but of what we put in our stomachs.

In order to make this exchange of material work, these farmers, many of them extremely poor, need to be supported to improve their own production and their custodianship role.

Only then can the positive effects of agricultural biodiversity protection for sustainable economic development be felt by the people who practice environmentally-friendly conservation everyday.

The International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA), part of the UN’s FAO, is the international body charged with finding a balance between the interests of poor farmers, and those of plant breeders.

As such, it was one of the first international legal instruments to put into practice the principle of benefit-sharing when accessing plant genetic material and resources.  It has already sponsored 61 projects across in 55 countries to the tune of 20 million dollars.

Much more funds are needed though and the ITPGRFA is currently looking to find ways of generating a more consistent revenue flow for low-income farmers in genetic resource-rich regions.

The ITPGRFA secretariat recently started work on a subscription system that would introduce an upfront regular payment of fees for access to genetic materials into the Treaty's current multilateral system.

One of the challenges will be to persuade commercial users of this material to sign up even though profits from the new plant varieties they create won’t come on stream for many years. 

Political support to the ITPGRFA is therefore crucial as a global fair exchange is needed urgently that is truly global in its reach.

The process has to be multilateral. Already no country is even half way self-sufficient in plant genetic resources - plants and crop seeds have moved round the world so that the Peruvian potato for example is produced and consumed as staples by peoples on the opposite side of the world. The maize in the ugali eaten in East Africa originates from Mexico, the wheat in Pakistani chapatis comes from the Middle East.

The conservation and sustainable use and propagation of biodiversity in agriculture is therefore key if the UN’s 2030 Development Agenda, in particular, development goal two, to end hunger and achieve food security and improve nutrition, is to be achieved.

Photo credit:

©FAO/Giulio Napolitano / FAO. Seeds and planting materials to meet the needs of farmers for enhancing agricultural productivity in Afghanistan