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Global Crop Diversity Trust
- 2. A FOUNDATION FOR FOOD SECURITY One seed at a time, protecting the future of food
- 3. Cary Fowler, Executive Director Global Crop Diversity Trust Former Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Dr. Fowler served as Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. He represented the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.
- 4. The fight against hunger is one of the greatest challenges facing the world over the coming decades. Crop diversity is fundamental to defeating hunger and achieving food security and sustainability… and sustainability is at risk!
- 5. Sustainability is based on a simple principle: Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions where humans & nature can exist in harmony while fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.
- 7. But, the varieties of wheat, corn and rice we grow today may not thrive in a future threatened by climate change…
- 8. There are 35,000 to 40,000 varieties of beans alone! Each variety is valuable.
- 9. What is crop diversity? Agriculture depends on relatively few crops - only about 150 are cultivated to any substantial degree worldwide - but, each comes in a vast variety of distinctive forms such as height, flower color, branching pattern, fruiting time, seed size, or flavor.
- 10. Simply put, crop diversity is the biological base of all agriculture. Its use goes back to the origins of farming, and farmers and scientists must continually draw on this irreplaceable resource to ensure productive harvests.
- 11. The Trust aims to ensure the conservation of the diversity within all crops of importance to food security. The Trust will give priority to the crops included in the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture - the crops that have been selected as the most important for food security and interdependence
- 12. Nearly every major US food or fiber crop is battling pests and diseases against which it has no resistance. For all of these crops, the difference between devastation and resilience may be found in crop diversity collections around the world. Crop gene banks store samples of crops and their thousands of varieties.
- 13. The Global Crop Diversity Trust's answer is to raise an endowment - the interest is enough to guarantee the successful preservation (and the ready availability to those who need it) - of the biological basis of all agriculture. This will ensure that the conservation of this most crucial resource is placed forever on a firm foundation. In addition to the Trust's action is an international agreement on the importance of this issue. Nations around the world have adopted a number of international covenants that recognize the need for conserving crop diversity as well as confirming the important role of collections sustained in gene banks.
- 14. The Global Crop Diversity Trust was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Bioversity International, acting on behalf of the top international research organizations in this field (CGIAR). The Trust is currently hosted in Rome by FAO. Visit their websites:
- 15. Cary Fowler: One seed at a time, protecting the future of food http://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food. html EPA - What is sustainability? Retrieved 10/7/11 http://www.epa.gov/sustainability/basicinfo.htm Global Crop Diversity Trust 2010 Annual Report, Retrieved 10/8/11 http://issuu.com/croptrust/docs/annualreport2010?mode=embed&layout=http%3A%2F%2Fskin.iss uu.com%2Fv%2Flight%2Flayout.xml&showFlipBtn=true Global Crop Diversity Trust – Crop Diversity, Retrieved 10/8/11 http://www.croptrust.org/main/ldiversity.php Grover, S. (2008) Global Crop Diversity Trust: The Search for Climate Proof Food, Treehugger-A Discovery Company, Retrieved 10/9/11 http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/09/crop-diversity-climate-change.php
Notas del editor
- Two of the greatest challenges we face today are eradicating poverty and sustaining the environment. A healthy and productive agriculture is fundamental in meeting these challenges. This requires that we make use of the vast diversity of crop varieties that have evolved over time through dynamic interaction between nature and mankind. Crop diversity provides farmers and breeders with the basic materials needed to improve and adapt their crops.
- Link for video : “One seed at a time, protecting the future of food “ http://www.ted.com/talks/cary_fowler_one_seed_at_a_time_protecting_the_future_of_food.html
- With the increasingly unpredictable and shifting climate, coupled with a world population estimated to exceed 9 billion by 2050, unprecedented demands will fall on agriculture. Conserving the vast range of crop varieties is the only guarantee that farmers and plant breeders will be able to improve and adapt their crops to meet these challenges - and provide food for the future.
- "Our crops must produce more food, on the same amount of land, with less water, and more expensive energy," explained the trust's executive director, Cary Fowler. "There is no possible scenario in which we can continue to grow food we require without crop diversity."
- This diversity is awe inspiring! With more than 200,000 varieties of wheat alone, diversity provides the innate, biological core of our capability to grow the food needed today, as well as meeting the challenges presented by population growth, changing climates and the constantly evolving pests and diseases. No country is self-sufficient in crop diversity – agriculture everywhere depends on it. Yet this diversity, contained and stored in seeds, is at risk of disappearing. We can do something...
- Germ or Seed Banks around the world contain seeds that have been dried and frozen, and are ready to be used when needed…but these seed banks are vulnerable. And when the seeds are gone, they are gone forever. Quite frankly, if agriculture doesn’t adapt to climate change, then neither will we.
- In 1996, when the Food & AgriculturalOrganization (FAO) conducted the first systematic assessment of the state of the world’s gene banks, it found that a large number were in a state of “rapid deterioration.” Some gene banks had already closed and others battled with maintaining their physical structures and equipment. Maybe most concerning was a large backlog of plant samples that needed to be regenerated (reproduced) before they lost their viability and thereby their usefulness.
- Crops also vary in less obvious ways such as response to cold, heat or drought, or their ability to tolerate specific pests and diseases. Diversity in a crop can result from different growing conditions: a crop growing in poor soil is likely to be shorter than one growing in fertile soil. Genetic differences also play a part as some genes provide early maturity or resistance to disease. It is these heritable traits that are of particular interest as they are passed from generation to generation and together establish a crop’s general characteristics and future potential. By combining genes for different traits in desired combinations, plant breeders can develop new crop varieties to meet particular conditions
- And there is only one organization working worldwide to solve this problem - the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
- International Treaty crops include: breadfruit, asparagus, oat, beet, the cabbage family including broccoli and cauliflower, pigeon pea, chickpea, citrus, coconut, aroids, carrot, yams, finger millet, strawberry, sunflower, barley, sweet potato, grass pea, lentil, apple, cassava, banana/plantain, rice, pearl millet, beans, pea, rye, potato, eggplant, sorghum, triticale, wheat, cowpea, maize and more than 80 forage species from 30 different genera.
- The collections can be in the form of seeds, cuttings, plant cells in test tubes, or trees and vines planted in a field. But they all contain the genetic diversity vital for breeding new crop varieties that sustain and improve food production. Crop diversity collections include the crucial raw material of agriculture, without which production would catastrophically decline.
- Among these are the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (1996); and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2001). Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the priorities for development as agreed by all members of the United Nations, will require that crop diversity be effectively conserved. The Trust directly contributes to three of the goals: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger,to ensure environmental sustainability and to develop a global partnership for development.
- If you would like to donate to The Global Crop Diversity Trust, go to their website athttps://npo.networkforgood.org/Donate/Donate.aspx?npoSubscriptionId=3605
- Thank you!