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May 11, 2006
Source:
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust
Importance, Neglect and Potential
During the
Depression in the United States in the 1930s, it is said that
some parents too poor to care for their children would put them
on a freight train, wave good-bye and hope for the best. Maybe
that’s what happened with yams.
Like the children
placed on the trains, yams are orphans. So are millets, cassava,
taro, tef and cowpea. In fact, there are dozens of orphan crops,
crops that receive little, if any, care or attention relative to
their value and importance.
There are more
than 50,000 edible plants in the world. A few hundred make a
significant contribution to food supplies, according to FAO.
Some 150, historically, have entered into world commerce. And
yet a sizeable portion of these – perhaps the majority of those
FAO is referring to - and perhaps even a majority of those that
have circulated in world trade - have never benefited from the
efforts of a single scientifically-trained plant breeder.
Consider yams.
Nearly 40 million metric tons were produced last year. Have
trouble comprehending that quantity? It’s an amount that would
fill about a million train cars – more than the railroad
companies in North America own. But, don’t worry. That’s not
where the demand is.
More than 95% of
yams are grown in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily in Cameroon,
Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. Millions of
people – primarily poor people - depend on yams as a staple
crop. But how many people do yams depend on? About a half-dozen.
There are about six yam breeders in the world, the greatest
concentration at the International Institute for Tropical
Agriculture (IITA) in Nigeria. Of course, yams actually benefit
from the efforts of many, many people, not the least being
farmers. But, you get the point – relative to the importance of
the crop, formal investment in it is scandalously low. And food
security for millions is therefore put at risk.
Bananas are
another orphan crop. In weight terms, banana production is
almost double that of yams. In terms of gross value of
production, bananas and plantains are the developing world’s
fourth most important crop after rice, wheat and maize. Millions
of people – chiefly in Africa - depend on bananas as their
primary staple crop. Per capita consumption in some places
exceeds a kilo a day! Like yams, however, there are only a
half-dozen banana breeders in the world. Major diseases threaten
the crop. In the long run it is unlikely that the single variety
that supports the entire industry exporting bananas from the
tropics to Europe and North America can survive the onslaught.
New, disease resistant varieties are desperately needed, which
is one reason why existing banana collections, small in number,
are so very important and vital to conserve.
Orphan crops are
not minor or insignificant crops. Writing in the journal, Food
Policy, Naylor, Falcon, et al, observe that they are “valued
culturally, often adapted to harsh environments, nutritious, and
diverse in terms of their genetic, agroclimatic, and economic
niches.” Collectively, 27 “orphan” crops with a value of $100
billion are grown on 250 million hectares (618 million acres) in
developing countries. Hardly trivial sums.
Despite their
importance in the diets of millions of poor people, and their
contribution to already fragile household and national
economies, orphan crops receive relatively little scientific
attention or private research investment. They are simply too
difficult, time-consuming and expensive to breed for a target
market of poor farmers.
Similar reasons
conspire against assembling and maintaining collections of the
diversity of orphan crops, making the task of the few breeders
that work with them that much more difficult and precarious.
Donor funding for maintaining the diversity of yams or the
diversity of tef, the most important cereal crop in Ethiopia,
rises, falls and sometimes just disappears according to fashion
and whim, leaving collections imperiled or worse.
A few breeders
working with secure and well-managed, well-documented crop
diversity collections can accomplish a great deal. Burdening the
same breeders with vulnerable, resource-starved collections of
breeding stock is a recipe for failure, and a disaster for the
future of many of these crops and the people they sustain.
Modest Investment - Big Returns
The importance of
orphan crops in reaching the Millennium Development Goals is out
of all proportion to the low levels of investment which they
receive. By guaranteeing funding for the conservation and
availability of these crops, the Global Crop Diversity Trust
will ensure that collections of these crops have a good safe
home as well as a future in the global effort to strengthen food
security and alleviate poverty.
Collections of
breeding materials for orphan crops are often relatively small –
fewer than 2000 types of bananas represent/contain the diversity
in that crop, for example, compared to well over 100,000 for
rice. Conservation costs should, therefore, be reasonable, while
future returns to investment in this effort will, as a
consequence, be tremendous. Moreover, as the article in Food
Policy notes, modern technologies applied by breeders working
with crop diversity collections may produce rapid productivity
gains in orphan crops – gains that by definition will accrue to
some of the poorest people on earth.
The choice is
clear. We can adopt these orphans and help them become even more
productive citizens. Or, we can take them to the station, put
them on a train, and wave good-bye.
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