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1 Aug 2005 22:45:06 -0000

SOS: Save Our Seeds

press-release

 

 

 

 

The Institute of Science in Society Science Society

Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk

 

General Enquiries sam Website/Mailing List

press-release ISIS Director m.w.ho

================================================== ======

 

SOS: Save Our Seeds

 

*********************

 

 

Dr. Mae-Wan Ho warns of new dangers posed by genetic

engineering to the world's gene banks, already in jeopardy

from years of under-funding, and stresses the importance of

in situ conservation and seed saving in local communities

for sustainable food systems and food security

 

A fully referenced version of this article is posted on ISIS

members' website. Details http://www.i-

sis.org.uk/membership.php

 

World genebanks and food security in jeopardy

*********************************************

 

Deteriorating conditions in the world's crop genebanks pose

" a major threat to US agriculture, " says a new study

published by the University of California Genetic Resources

Conservation Program. The report, Securing the Future of

U.S. Agriculture: The Need to Conserve Collections of Crop

Diversity Worldwide, notes that nearly every major crop in

the United States - including soybeans, corn, wheat, rice,

potatoes, oranges and apples - is battling a plethora of new

or re-merging pests to which there is little or no

resistance. Failure to adequately maintain crop genebank

collections " could constrain agriculture's ability to avert

billions of dollars in crop damage. " These genebanks provide

the diversity needed to enable the crops " to stay one step

ahead of pests " , and also to improve quality, nutritional

value, and yield. But lack of funding has left many of the

collections in a state of decay. Just prior to the

publication of the report, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman

Borlaug was warning the world of a new rust epidemic from

East Africa, that, if it gets loose in Asia, North America,

South America and Australia, would infect half of all our

grain varieties, and the stage would be set for a major

disaster. This calls for ongoing research. " But when you

haven't had a major epidemic in 52 years, complacency

becomes a problem. " Borlaug said. Underlying the almost $200

billion value of US agriculture's production at the farm

level is a little known resource – the genebanks around the

world. The report, released at a congressional briefing in

Washington 28 February 2005, noted that the collections held

in gene banks " represent the historic and current diversity

of agriculture, without which farming in the U.S. and around

the world would stagnate and flounder. " Qualset and Henry L.

Shands, director of the USDA/Agricultural Research Service's

National Center for Genetic Resources Preservation, were co-

authors of the report. At the World Food Day symposium on 19

October 2004, United Nations Food and Agriculture

Organisation (FAO) Director-General Jacques Diouf delivered

a similar message on the importance of genebanks. He said

that global efforts to conserve plants and animals in

genebanks, botanical gardens and zoos are vital to

maintaining global biodiversity and promoting food security

worldwide. In fact, the theme of the 24th annual World Food

Day was " Biodiversity for Food Security " . Worldwide, there

are nearly 5.4 million crop samples in 1 470 genebanks.

These are important repositories for conserving seeds and

germplasm, as agricultural biodiversity has been severely

eroded under industrial monoculture practised over the

latter half of the last century (see Box 1). Lack of

biodiversity leaves major crops vulnerable to disease,

causing famines and starvation. The Irish Potato famine in

the 1830s was one example, when the Phytophthora potato

blight destroyed the entire crop, as the farmers grew only

one variety, and there was no genetic diversity in seed

banks or elsewhere to fall back on. Gene banks also play a

vital role in maximizing the use of wild and cultivated

varieties in crop improvement through selective breeding.

 

Box 1 *****

 

Loss of agricultural biodiversity from industrial

monoculture FAO estimates that about 75 percent of the

genetic diversity of agricultural crops had been lost during

the last century. Farmers in the United States grew more

than 7 000 varieties of apples in the 1800s; by the end of

the 1900s, all but 300 were extinct. In 1949, farmers in

China grew 10 000 varieties of wheat; by the 1970s, they

grew just 1000. Similar losses of maize varieties have

occurred in Mexico and of rice varieties in India. Of 6 500

animal breeds known today, almost one third are threatened

or already extinct.

 

Genebanks have been in major trouble for some years; there

simply is not enough money for gene banks to fulfil even

their basic conservation role, let alone their other role of

maximising the use of wild and domesticated varieties for

crop breeding and improvement. When dried and kept cold,

some seeds will last for 30 years or longer. Others have to

be grown out regularly and harvested to keep seeds fresh and

alive. Tubers, roots and cuttings for plants can be kept in

test tubes, usually as tissue culture, and periodically

regenerated. All these cannot be done without money. Without

proper care, existing seed stock will eventually lose its

viability. Prof. Jeff Waage of Imperial College's department

of agricultural sciences in London, UK, had earlier reported

to the United Nations World Summit on Sustainable

Development in August 2002, that although the number of

plant samples held in crop diversity collections has

increased by 65 percent, genebank budgets have been cut back

in 25 percent of the countries and remained the same in

another 35 percent. Waage's report said that one in 12 of

the world's 250 000 species of flowering plants are likely

to disappear before 2025. A chief culprit is modern

agriculture, particularly when forests are cleared to create

farmland. " Among the losses are the wild relatives of

domesticated plants with as yet untapped potential, " said

the report. These include wheat, soya beans, tomatoes,

coffee and grapes To add to the trouble, war in developing

countries had destroyed some vital centres, other have their

electricity cut off, so rare seeds are not kept in cool

conditions required. Rwanda, Burundi, Somalia and Romania

have all lost their genebanks. Albania, Fiji and Nigeria

have lost part of their collections. In response to the

crisis in genebanks, the Global Crop Diversity Trust was

launched at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in

2002 (Box 2).

 

Box 2 *****

 

Global Crop Diversity Trust The Global Crop Diversity Trust

was set up in 2002 at the World Summit for Sustainable

Development as a type 2 (public-private partnership)

involving the FAO and the 15 " Future Harvest Centres " of the

Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research

(CGIAR) [4, 5]. It hopes to raise US$260 million required to

protect the world's most important crop species; so far,

only $56 million has been committed. Among the first grants

are to the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry

(VIR) based in St. Petersburg, established and named after

the famous Russian plant geneticist Nicolai Vavilov, which

now holds around 95 000 accessions of grain crops, over 43

000 legumes and 50 000 vegetables. Nikolai Vavilov was one

of the first and most prolific collectors of plant seeds; he

made more than 100 collecting missions around the world

between 1915 and 1930, and was responsible for the idea of

" centres of origin " for regions with a high diversity of

species.

 

Genetic engineering the new threat A new threat to gene

banks has surfaced in the events surrounding the forced

merger in 2002 of Italy's gene bank in Bari – among the

world's ten largest – with much smaller centres involved in

genetic modification of crop plants ( " Italy's gene bank at

risk " , this series). Although by far the biggest institution

in the merger, its director since 1982, Prof. Pietro

Perrino, was sidelined in the competition for the

directorship of the merged institute, which went instead, to

a professor in Naples who has yet to move to Bari. Perrino

was downgraded to " manager " of Bari's germplasm collection

of 84 000 accessions. But right from the first, it was

obvious that the new director has little or no interest in

preserving the collection. Things came to a head when the

cooling system broke down and the director refused to have

it repaired. In desperation, Perrino resorted to the law

court to have the collection placed under his custody in

order to have the cooling system repaired. But damages to

the collection may have already occurred. Perrino and his

supporters are convinced that the new director and the " pro-

GM lobby " are not at all interested in conserving the

collection, but are using it as a pretext for getting

research funding for genetic modification. More than that,

Perrino and his supporters suspect that the pro-GM lobby and

the GM giants really would like to see the collection

destroyed. This sounds far-fetched until one gets inside the

genetic engineer's mindset. To a genetic engineer, DNA is

all. Once a genome sequence is known and deposited in a

database, and the DNA of the plant genome deposited in a DNA

biobank, then the seed or plant is really of little or no

interest. After all, DNA sequences of any gene can easily be

synthesized in the laboratory and used to transform existing

crop plants to make any desired GM variety, be it herbicide

tolerance, insect resistance, salt or drought tolerance,

improved nutritional properties, increase in yield, etc., at

least in theory. That is precisely the same mentality that

motivates " gene-hunting " of indigenous tribes threatened

with extinction, so as to preserve their DNA before they

become extinct, " for the good of humanity " . Unfortunately,

we can no more resurrect a plant from its DNA than

reconstruct an extinct indigenous tribe with its distinctive

language, knowledge and culture that constitute an entire

way of life. This exclusive emphasis on DNA is misplaced

even for genetic engineers, especially those using marker-

assisted selective breeding on existing lines to enable them

to identify useful traits. The genetic markers can be

identified through screening the DNA; but the plants

themselves will still be needed for cross-breeding. An

additional disincentive for proponents of GM to preserve

germplasm in seed banks is that they are considered the

natural heritage of the earth, if not of the human species,

and cannot be patented for commercial exploitation if there

is no genetic modification or gene isolation involved (see

the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food

and Agriculture, Box 3). So, as far as agribusiness is

concerned, they are of no commercial value, or indeed of

negative commercial value, as seed or germplasm collection

allows farmers to do their own selective breeding for

improving crops and livestock, instead of having to purchase

patented seeds from the companies and pay royalties. That

would reverse the corporate serfdom being imposed on farmers

all over the world (see SiS26), and that's precisely the

reason why gene banks are important, particularly if farmers

can get ready access to their collections (see below).

 

Box 3 *****

 

 

International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and

Agriculture This treaty is the outcome of the International

Undertaking (IU) on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and

Agriculture adopted by the FAO conference in 1983. Starting

in 1996, the IU was revised through negotiations to make it

compatible with the Convention on Biological Diversity

(CBD), and renamed the International Treaty (IT).

Negotiations were finalized in November 2001, and the IT was

hailed by FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf [2] as " a

triumph for the indigenous farmers, herders, forest dwellers

and fishing communities of the world. " It establishes a

multilateral system of access and benefit sharing to ensure

that plant genetic resources of the greatest importance to

food security are readily available for use now and in the

future, and that any benefits are shared with the countries

in which they originated. It also establishes a mechanism to

ensure that researchers worldwide have access to those

resources. Critics note however, that it does not go far

enough in protecting our common heritage from commercial

exploitation and patenting ( " Science for the poor, or

procurer for the rich? " SiS 15). The United States is a

signatory to the treaty, which entered into force in June

2004.

 

 

In situ conservation against corporate serfdom

 

**********************************************

 

 

Apart from the ex situ conservation, in situ conservation -

maintaining biodiversity on farms and in nature – is equally

important, if not more so, for counteracting corporate

serfdom. Jacque Diouf himself has stressed the importance of

in situ conservation. " The responsibility for conserving

agrobiodiversity on farms in a great part of the world

usually belongs to women farmers who traditionally harvest

and conserve crop seeds from season to season. " Said Diouf.

" This local agrodiversity is particularly important for the

resilience of farming systems and communities in emergencies

or humanitarian crises, such as those that affected more

than 45 million people last year. " He pointed out that most

of the earth's genetic diversity is found in the poor

countries in the developing world; and that " it is

imperative that those most responsible for its development

and its preservation - the indigenous people who maintain

the farms, the herds, the forests and the fishing areas -

are both respected and rewarded for their efforts. " In situ

conservation and seed saving by local communities themselves

is the key to recovering and safeguarding local agricultural

biodiversity for genuinely sustainable food systems that

involves local production and consumption, and restores

self-sufficiency and autonomy to farmers and the local

communities. " There used to be many local variety seeds not

only for food crops such as rice and corn, but also for

beans/legumes and fruit trees. " Says Hira Jhamtani of

Konphalindo, Indonesia, a public interest organisation

involved in promoting sustainable agriculture. " The problem

is that the knowledge is dying with the old farmers, and the

younger generation has no comprehensive knowledge on seed

conservation, nor do they seem to be interested. This is

where scientists can play a role in documenting local seed

varieties and reviving seed breeding among the younger

generations based and rooted in local knowledge. The local

know-how still exists in many places in Indonesia (and also

the Philippines), the question is how to regenerate the

biodiverse agricultural-base and revitalise this knowledge

through community based activities. " Neth Dano, associate of

Third World Network in the Philippines, who has worked with

local communities to develop sustainable agriculture for

many years, is less than happy about a blanket call to

increase funding for genebanks. " The genebank/ex situ

strategy should not be seen as a stand-alone genetic

conservation strategy but should complement the in-situ/on-

farm strategies of communities, institutions and civil

society. " Says Dano, " This would require genebank

scientists working closely with farmers and indigenous

peoples in seeds conservation on farm. Increase funding for

genebanks should be tied to increased funding for in-

situ/on-farm conservation and utilization efforts. " This

will ensure that the genebanks will not just conserve

genetic resources for corporate agriculture, but first and

foremost for world food security and the livelihood of those

who have nurtured and are dependent on these genetic

resources. " We also have to take note that there are many

cases when the ex situ conservation is not relevant at all,

as in the case of the Least Developed Countries which cannot

even afford to pay for electricity to keep the genebanks

running after these have been built through grants or even

loans that the future generation will have to pay. " Dano

adds. She also points out that even if most or all of the

collections in the CGIAR genebanks are not patented, as they

are " common heritage of mankind " , they remain inaccessible

to farmers especially if traditional breeds have already

been lost. Genebanks should make every effort to ensure

that their collections are accessible to the farmers and

indigenous peoples who need them, as most of the materials

were collected by scientists from farming and indigenous

communities in the first place. There must be concrete

mechanisms to inform farmers and to facilitate farmers'

access to these materials.

 

Seed-saving against corporate serfdom Seed saving is an

important activity that does not have to wait for massive

funding, and many local communities have already started to

do just that, to make sure they conserve what they still

have, and not to depend on genebanks. For example, the Henry

Doubleday Research Association in the UK with 30 000 members

are a major seed saver for organic gardening and farming,

although it is not a gene bank. Its Heritage Seed Library

conserves and makes available to members European vegetable

varieties that are not widely available. Currently, 700

accessions of open-pollinated varieties are held, of which

about 200 are in its Seed Catalogue sent free to members

(http://www.hdra.org.uk/hsl/index.htm). Navdanya ( " Nine

seeds " ) started by Dr. Vandana Shiva of the Research

Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology in India is

active not only in seed saving but also in revitalising

indigenous knowledge and culture, in creating awareness on

the hazards of genetic engineering, and in defending

people's knowledge from biopiracy and people's food rights

in the face of globalisation. It has its own seed bank and

organic farm over an area of 20 acres in Uttranchal, north

India (http://www.navdanya.org/). In Ireland, Anita Hayes

founded the Irish Seed Savers Association (ISSA) in 1991 in

her own home and garden. But with a core of willing helpers

and seed donations, and financial aid from government bodies

and many generous funders, the ISSA took off. It now has a

large collection of Irish fruits, cereals and vegetables

(http://www.irishseedsavers.ie/).

 

 

 

 

================================================== ======

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General Enquiries sam Website/Mailing List

press-release ISIS Director m.w.ho

 

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