World Food Day focussed on the need to preserve crop varieties from extinction

ph. This year's 16th October World Food Day theme, "Biodiversity for Food Security", highlighted the vital role of biodiversity in ensuring that all people have sustainable access to enough diversified food to lead active and healthy lives. The United Nations says that unless efforts are made globally to safeguard agricultural biodiversity, the world's food supply will be threatened.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), about three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost over the last century. And of 6,300 animal breeds, 1,350 are endangered or already extinct.

It says food supply has become more vulnerable, and there are now fewer opportunities for growth and innovation in agriculture. More than 40 percent of the earth's surface is used for agriculture, placing a large responsibility on farmers to protect biodiversity. Added to that, people depend on just 14 mammal and bird species for 90 percent of their food supply from animals. When one part of the balance goes wrong, the result costs millions of lives.

Positive models

The question about the causes of this loss to mankind has been answered many times over. Agribusiness and the use of GM crops, which have put farmers under intolerable pressure the world over by forcing prices to unheard of lows and introducing murderous competition, must bear the brunt of the blame. However, in the midst of this quagmire stand those whose examples will hopefully inspire others to struggle against the tide that threatens so many farmers, farmers who possess such a rich fund of valuable knowledge of local conditions and peculiarities. Among them, two are described below.

1. Switzerland: Although biodiversity in Switzerland has suffered too, it is mainly wild species of plants and animals that have been affected the most. Domesticated plants have fared better. Switzerland is relatively rich in cultivated species. Plant protection has long been a Swiss priority. Seed banks were established over a century ago and today's system preserves plants that are not in regular use anymore. Seed banks are an insurance against changing conditions, such as climate, new pests or consumer demand.

The usefulness of seed banks was demonstrated recently when Japanese agronomists transplanted a little-known Swiss wheat variety, resistant to cold and wet conditions, to the northern island of Hokkaido.

However, agricultural domestic animals, such as cattle, pigs and goats, have not been so fortunate. "We have been able to save a few species, but there are others that are gone forever," said Philippe Ammann of Pro Specie Rara, an association that has promoted protection of rare breeds of plants and animals since 1982.

Today, there are 24 indigenous livestock breeds, nine of which are considered in danger, according to FAO guidelines. While these livestock breeds are not under any immediate threat, their long-term survival is not guaranteed either. The Swiss Federal Agriculture Office pays subsidies to breeding organisations to encourage members to rear these animals. It also organises programmes to improve the gene pool of rare livestock.

2. In 1991 Vandana Shiva founded Naydanya in India. Over the past decade it has grown into a proactive movement for seed saving and organic farming. She has now also started Bija Vidyapeeth, or the Seed University, at the Navdanya farm near Dehradun, India, where month-long courses are held to disseminate knowledge and initiate dialogue about holistic living. As she says, there is so much knowledge in the local communities, especially among the older people, the grandmothers. Indeed, the movement to reclaim the biological and intellectual commons has rejuvenated indigenous knowledge and promoted its propagation from grandmothers to grandchildren through documentation in Community Biodiversity Registers. Navdanya's focus on collective, cumulative innovation embodied in indigenous knowledge has created a worldwide movement for the defence of the intellectual rights of communities.

Convinced that it would be inspiring for farmers to come to a farm and see 250 varieties of rice and 800 species of plants growing in the same field, Shiva started the Navdanya conservation farm about six years ago. In the beginning it was a toxic desert created by eucalyptus monoculture, but it was nursed back to health. It was an occasion to practice what they had learnt about organic farming and holistic land practices. The results have been fantastic. Every year there's a 10 per cent increase in the yield, in bio-diversity and friendly pests. They also need to irrigate less as the soil's capacity to hold water is increasing. And each time Shiva comes back, "I see more ladybirds and butterflies."

Navdanya is a network of conservation. Community seed banks have been started in nine Indian states and about 2,000 farmers have been converted to organic farming. More than 1500 varieties of rice, hundreds of millets, pulses, oilseeds and vegetable varieties have been rescued. The issue really is freedom, from multinational seed corporations and from chemicals. Shiva explains: "Navdanya started as a constructive response to the perverse dreams of controlling life through genetic engineering and patents. The very idea of patenting life is abhorrent and speaking against it has become my ethical engagement. Patenting assumes life in all its diversity to be a human creation. It also allows Western arrogance to loot indigenous knowledge, as in the case of neem or turmeric or ashwagandha, and then charge royalties on it. (. . .) Today, we have to realize that the seed is free, the neem is free. Why should we pay royalty to Ricetec for basmati?"

Shiva is not only a deeply ecological person she is also a deeply spiritual one. For her the two are closely linked. "You can be an eco-technocrat, but you can't really feel the pain of violence against nature, and the joy that comes with healing it. Spirituality for me is all about connecting, and about a widening circle of sympathy and compassion, which includes the entire earth. My way of doing this is to ensure bio-diversity and safety from poisonous chemicals."

"Why should our farmers commit suicide and children be dying of hunger when this earth provides enough for everybody? Do you know that over 20,000 farmers have committed suicide due to new seeds and chemicals, because they were so steeped in debt? My spiritual engagement really is to stop the murders of children, hardworking farmers and diverse species."

In a world where every eight seconds a child somewhere dies of hunger related causes, where almost one billion people wake up each morning, uncertain of where their next meal will come from, there needs to be greater awareness of the fact that we have global resources available to feed more than 12 billion people, that more should be done to preserve what still remains.