Rome, Italy
September 22, 2006
Source:
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust
The best stamp collections and
the worst genebanks have a lot in common. Neither get used for
the purpose for which they were intended.
Last year, America's biggest investment fund manager, Bill
Gross, shelled out $3 million to acquire the one stamp he needed
to complete his personal collection of 19th century U.S. postage
stamps. He won't be pasting it on a postcard. Valuable stamps
don't circulate.
Frozen in a genebank, seed collections are about as useful but
considerably less valuable than Mr. Gross's stamps. Used in
plant breeding programs, they have considerably more value. But
this doesn't mean that it is easy to place a precise economic
value on this genetic resource. The value it has is realized in
the crop varieties planted in farmers' fields. It is not
expressed inside a freezer. Either farmers have crop varieties
that withstand pests, diseases, floods, droughts and heat waves,
or they don't. Either they grow varieties that produce adequate
yields, or they don't and perhaps people go hungry as a
consequence. All these things depend on whether the requisite
genetic traits exist and whether plant breeders have access to
them, or not.
While not all the benefits of crop diversity can be reduced to
monetary measurements, some can, and thus, with a bit of
difficulty, it is possible to talk about the cost-benefit ratio
of conserving crop diversity and making it available for use.
Like clay to a sculptor or water to a fireman, the value of
genetic resources is best understood in relation to the
result of its use.
A Miserable
Looking Wheat
In 1948, Jack Harlan - plant
explorer, archaeobotanist, geneticist, breeder, and all of 30
years old - strode into one of the more remote corners of the
world, a Kurdish area of Turkey in Southeast Anatolia. There,
understanding that looks can be deceiving, he collected a number
of samples of different crops, including what he described as a
"hopelessly useless" wheat. This particular one entered the U.S.
genetic resources system as Plant Introduction No. 178383, its
seeds dutifully stored in the genebank. Fifteen years later this
miserable wheat rescued farmers in the Pacific Northwest of the
U.S. from disaster, when an outbreak of the disease 'stripe
rust' threatened to decimate their wheat fields. It quickly
entered the pedigrees of virtually all varieties grown there.
The gain to productivity has been calculated at millions of
dollars annually. One crop. One disease. One sample. A few seeds
collected at small expense - Harlan traveled simply, often on
donkey - and conserved in the genebank at an annual cost of less
than a dollar. The cost benefit ratio: many thousands to one.
The absolute monetary benefit: probably greater than the sum
needed to conserve all wheat diversity in perpetuity.
Every crop has a similar story. Most crops have many. Consider a
few examples of the returns on investment:
-
Every dollar spent on all
wheat research at the International Maize and Wheat
Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico, has generated $27 in
benefits when measured only from the resistance it
has produced for one disease (leaf rust) in one
type of wheat (spring bread wheat). This is a benefit
of $5.36 billion (in 1990 dollars).
-
Armineh Zohrabian and
colleagues writing in the American Journal of Agricultural
Economics calculated that the value of adding a single
sample to the U.S. soybean collection simply to search for
resistance to a single pest would likely exceed costs
(collection, conservation and screening) 36-61 times over.
The estimate is conservative, of course, because samples can
be screened and used for multiple traits.
-
Similarly, Robert Evenson of
Yale University and Douglas Gollin of Williams College
traced the flow of genetic resources at the International
Rice Research Institute (IRRI) into new varieties released
and grown in developing countries. They estimated that
adding an additional 1000 samples to IRRI's genebank would
generate an annual stream of benefits to poor farmers of
$325 million. Contrast this with the amount that would be
needed in an endowment to conserve 1000 samples in
perpetuity: $10,580. But, the Global Crop Diversity Trust is
not in the stamp collection business. We also intend to
endow the costs of periodic multiplication of the seed and
distribution to researchers and breeders, forever. The total
cost then comes to $61,770. In other words, a one-time
expenditure of less than $100,000 ends up producing annual
benefits of $325 million.
Counting
the Uncountable
As stunning as these figures
appear, they fail to capture the full benefit or value of crop
diversity. One can calculate the impact on food production of
growing a disease resistant crop variety as opposed to growing
one that is susceptible. And one can place an economic value on
the differential. But, not everything that counts can be
counted, as Einstein once pointed out. The genetic resources in
genebanks do not simply provide disease resistance, they
underpin the ability of the crop to be a crop. What is the real
value of wheat? Not some extra bushels of wheat, but wheat
itself. How can one put a dollar figure on crop diversity's
irreplaceable role in underpinning agriculture and human
civilization? Perhaps it's best not to try. Instead, think of
crop diversity as a "public good," as simply part of the
infrastructure of human society. It's worth more than money.
From Civilization to the Environment. Lloyd Evans, plant
physiologist, past president of the Australian Academy of
Science, and author of Feeding the Ten Billion, notes that
historically - since the dawn of agriculture - the easiest and
most common way of producing more food was to cut down more
trees and expand the amount of land under cultivation. Today, we
understand this to be a particularly costly strategy,
particularly when genetics can substitute for the chainsaw.
If, therefore, we seek to understand the true value of crop
diversity, one thing we must do is consider agriculture's role
in the larger ecosystem. Productive agricultural systems provide
benefits to the environment: fewer trees cut down, less
pesticide residue in soils, rivers and people.
These are only two, albeit huge, non-quantifiable benefits
society reaps from having - and using - collections of crop
genetic resources. There are still more.
Scientific knowledge itself is one. Genebank collections are the
basis for a great deal of basic biological research - a survey
of the journals Crop Science, Euphytica, Plant Breeding and
Theoretical and Applied Genetics found that 23% of the articles
were based on research conducted with materials from crop
genebanks.
Finally, there is what economists would term the "insurance"
value. Crop diversity collected, conserved and made available to
plant breeders and researchers, functions as an insurance policy
against future pests and diseases, the impact of climate change,
and constraints to supplies of energy and water. It is easy
enough to calculate the cost of this insurance premium - it's
the bill for maintaining genebank collections of crop diversity.
But, calculating the value of this service is simply impossible.
The bargain is obvious.
Are genebanks biological stamp collections? Unfortunately, some
are. But genetic resources are not stamps. Some people may get
pleasure from knowing that thousands of distinct types of wheat
are tucked away in a genebank, much as Bill Gross is doubtless
happy simply knowing that his stamps are safe and sound in his
collection.
However, the Trust is working to take collections far beyond
"safe and sound." The greatest and most enduring value of crop
diversity is derived when genebank collections are linked with
research and plant breeding efforts. This mixture creates
cost-benefit ratios that Mr. Gross, in his day job as America's
biggest investment fund manager, would find absolutely
breathtaking.
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SUBJECT
-
Dudnick, N.S., I. Thormann and
T. Hodgkin (2001) "The Extent and Use of Plant Genetic
Resources in Research: A literature survey." Crop Science.
Vol. 41, No. 1.
-
Koo, B., P. Pardey, B. Wright,
et al. (2004) Saving Seeds: The Economics of Conserving Crop
Genetic Resources Ex Situ in the Future Harvest Centres of
the CGIAR. CABI Publishing.
-
Smale, M. and B. Koo (eds.) (December 2003)
What is a Genebank Worth? Biotechnology and Genetic Resource
Policies, Briefs 7-12. International Food Policy Research
Institute, International Plant Genetic Resources Institute,
and the System-Wide Genetic Resources Programme (of the
CGIAR).
http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/rag/br1002.pdf
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