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"The Western system favours genetic uniformity, focusing heavily on yield for international trade; however, the crop production of Third World farmers is mostly for subsistence and regional trade," says Neil Whatley, crop specialist with Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development, Stettler. "Carrying out traditional agricultural practices, Third World farmers successfully cultivate genetically diverse, farmer-selected crops that are much lower yielding, but favour traits for pest resistance and strong root systems, making them very important to these farmers who use few capital-intensive inputs. These crops are referred to as farmer varieties or landraces."
In an industrialized farming system, to control pests, for example, science develops synthetic inputs for crops as well as inserting pest resistant genetic material into high yielding crops by crossing with landraces. The landraces used by less capital-intensive farmers in the Third World are ideal sources for this genetic material. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, crop genetic diversity is mostly concentrated in farming regions of the Third World.
"There has been a trend in recent decades to conserve seeds from landraces in seed banks - facilities where temperature and humidity are artificially controlled," says Whatley. "This manner of conservation is very important. However, due to being confined in a seed bank, landraces are no longer subjected to dynamic interactions with soils, climates and pests in their natural habitats. On the other hand, on-farm landraces produced by farmers in the Third World stay in continuous contact with natural co-evolutionary processes, assuring them to be tolerant to harmful diseases, insects and to other emerging environmental factors."
Whatley recently attended a conference where crop botanist and author, Gary Nabhan, spoke about his new book Where Our Food Comes From. Nabhan suggests that the future of food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. Whatley comments that he was particularly intrigued by one area of the world that Nabhan spoke about. Elaborating on the clever plant selection knowledge carried out by indigenous farmers in the Pamir Mountains of Afghanistan and neighboring Tajikistan, Nabhan explained that these mountainous farms are sources for numerous landraces responsible for the successful breeding of early-maturing varieties of wheat, lentil and chickpea in the West - genetic material in grain varieties that continue to be cultivated by us to this day.
These genetically diverse, farmer-selected crops used in the Third World provide genetic material tolerant to pests and adaptable to varying soil and climatic conditions encountered both in the Pamir Mountains and the Canadian Prairies. Nabhan explained that the small farms where these seeds are derived have been functioning sustainably for millennia.
"This deep knowledge of farmer-selected crops is one of the many positive characteristics that ought to be appreciated about cultures in the Third World, as well as being something that farmers everywhere gratefully depend upon for their own long-term farming well-being," says Whatley. "I have found from my own experiences working in Third World agricultural development that remote areas do exist where farm families may seem poor but are extremely rich in knowledge about their local crops and, due to this, they live sustainably and comfortably."
As Nabhan commented, "We must honour and support these farmers just as much as we support seed banks, for they do essential frontline work, just as the seed banks serve as essential backup."
Contact: Neil Whatley 310-FARM (3276)
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