AusAID and GRDC pledges put Australia in the proud position as the major global player in the international effort to conserve the world’s diversity of crop varieties and their wild relatives

This week’s Federal Budget pledge for AusAID to support the international effort to protect and maintain humanity’s agricultural heritage was warmly welcomed today by The Hon. Tim Fischer, Chairman of the ATSE Crawford Fund and former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia; and Geoffrey Hawtin, Interim Executive Secretary of the Global Conservation Trust.

"The generous provision of $16.5 million from the Australian Government for the Global Conservation Trust indicates an unprecedented acknowledgement by Australia of the importance of the world’s crop diversity collections," said Mr Fischer. "It is a visionary commitment by AusAID," he said. "A further significant pledge from grain producers through The Grains Research & Development Corporation, is absolutely tremendous and puts Australia in the proud position of being a major player in the international effort to conserve the world’s crop diversity," he said.

After some 10,000 years of planting, ploughing, and breeding of crops for human use, there are millions of plant samples housed in some 1,470 "genebanks", underpinning a stable and sustainable food supply. "Many of these collections are seriously under-funded, jeopardising the ongoing security of agriculture and the world’s ability to feed itself," said Mr Fischer. "It’s staggering that while the world has 250,000 species of flowering plants, one in 12 of them (an astonishing 8%) now seem likely to disappear before 2025," he said.

The Global Conservation Trust seeks to create an endowment to support crop diversity collections in perpetuity. Spearheaded by the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Trust seeks to raise an endowment of US$260 million. Approximately US$25 million has been committed so far by the governments of the United States, Switzerland, Egypt and Colombia, and the United Nations and Gatsby Foundations.

"Australia is now doing its bit for maintaining the crop collections that have so helped our primary producers," he said. "For example, more than 90% of wheats grown in Australia are from breeding germplasm collected at the Mexico-based research and seed centre CIMMYT. This alone is estimated to have yielded a net benefit to Australian farmers of some $147 million each year," said Mr Fischer.

"These genebanks have also proved invaluable in restoring agricultural production in war-torn countries such as Cambodia, Afghanistan and East Timor by providing seeds originating in those countries to farmers for planting. It is almost certain that genebanks holding samples of Iraqi material will be called upon to restore them to Iraq," he said.

"The conservation of crop diversity is a little known necessity for meeting the most fundamental need of humankind: the need for food," said Geoffrey Hawtin, Interim Executive Secretary of the Global Conservation Trust. "This globally significant conservation effort is far more than a warehousing exercise. The whole purpose of carefully collecting, documenting, studying and conserving crop resources is to make them easier to use—and thus more useful. Genebanks distribute hundreds of thousands of samples from their collections each year upon request from scientists, breeders, and farmers all over the world for their use in research and crop improvement," he explained.

"Australia is right now the world leader in financial commitment to plant genetic resources through the Global Conservation Trust. It also provides a model for a public-private partnership whose goal is to improve food security and livelihoods around the world. We can now only hope that other nations follow Australia’s lead," said Mr Hawtin.

"The Global Conservation Trust operates within the framework of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. The Treaty, adopted in November 2001 by consensus of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s 140-member nations, is the most important international law that addresses the conservation and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture," said Mr Hawtin. Australia is a signatory to the Treaty.