WSSD: New Fund Will Pay to Safeguard Crop Diversity

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

JOHANNESBURG, Aug 29 2002 (IPS) - While the world awaits an action plan to emerge from the United Nations summit on sustainable development, a group of plant specialists are drumming up support here for a particular venture – an international trust to safeguard the world’s varied food crops.

The Global Conservation Trust (GCT) would seek to preserve gene banks across the world by funding national, regional and international crop diversity collection centres.

Ensuring the survival of genetically diverse strains of crops will help keep the world’s food supply safe, say the experts.

“Any gene bank group will be entitled for funding,” said Geoffrey Hawtin, director general of the Rome-based International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), after the Trust was unveiled Thursday. “Even community farmers with gene banks can apply.”

“This will assure food security,” added M.S. Swaminathan, a leading plant genetic expert at the Indian Centre for Research on Sustainable Agricultural and Rural Development. “The foundation has been laid for genetic security in the future.”

The need for the GCT was amplified by a report released here Thursday that revealed the extent of agricultural biodiversity that the planet has lost over recent decades, due to a range of factors.

“The world contains an estimated 250,000 species of flowering plants, but one in 12 of them (eight percent) now seem likely to disappear before 2025,” states the report, ‘Crop Diversity at Risk: The Case For Sustaining Crop Collections’, authored by the department of agriculture science at London’s Imperial College.

According to estimates from the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), it adds, nearly “three-quarters of the original varieties of agricultural crops have been lost from farm fields since 1900. And this trend has accelerated in the last half century”.

Today, there are 1,470 gene banks in nearly 150 countries, says Christopher Higgins of Imperial College, containing some 5.4 million samples.

Within minutes of its launch, the GCT received its first nods of support and financial backing from the international community.

A U.S. government representative said the trust is a timely measure to stall the spread of poverty in the rural reaches of the world.

“I have been converted to this cause. And there is strong support in the White House for this,” said Andrew Natsios, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, during the meeting.

Switzerland pledged 10 million U.S. dollars for the trust, the U.N. Foundation promised 500,000 dollars and Egypt said it would supply 250,000 dollars.

According to Hawtin, those behind the GCT – including the FAO and the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) – hope to raise 260 million dollars initially. The bulk of the money will be used to collect and preserve seeds for the gene banks.

China and Mexico are just two examples of countries that have lost significant crop diversity, according to the Imperial College report. In China, farmers grew close to 10,000 wheat varieties in 1949 but by the 1970s “only about 1,000 varieties remained in use”.

“In Mexico, between the 1930s and today, farmers have lost about 80 percent of their traditional maize varieties,” adds the report.

“A wide range of crops – from broccoli to sugarcane – is following a similar trend,” it says. For instance, 80 to 90 percent of the U.S. broccoli crop comes from fewer than five hybrid broccoli plants, and “one hybrid, ‘Marathon’, accounts for more than 50 percent of the acreage”.

“Most sugarcane cultivars in the world today were derived from crosses made with only a few clones selected in the late 1800s and early 1900s in India and Java,” it adds. “This narrow genetic base puts sugarcane cultivation at risk from several diseases.”

Plant genetic specialists at Thursday’s meeting drew attention to other equally well-known food crops that are as vulnerable due to their small genetic base. Bananas and pineapple are just two, they said, that could vanish from the world’s tables if struck by diseases.

The shift in agriculture trends over the last 50 years is partly responsible for that vulnerability, says Swaminathan. “The food base has narrowed due to the monoculture being pushed by large companies.”

The FAO has also discovered that many of the world’s gene banks were in various states of “rapid deterioration”, compounding the vulnerable state of global food security.

Last November, the agency introduced a measure to stall this course. The FAO’s 180-nation conference adopted the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, a document aimed at managing agricultural biodiversity.

Since then, 64 countries have signed the treaty and 12 have ratified it. The document needs 40 ratifications to go into force.

Thursday’s launch of the GCT was seen by some here as the logical continuum of a process begun to ensure crop diversity and ensure food security world wide. Now, close to 800 million people lack sufficient food to lead a healthy life.

“The principle behind it is a good one,” says Pat Mooney, a Canadian activist who monitors genetic research. “It will benefit farmers. It will help crop diversity.”