|
January 14, 2009
Source:
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust
Dear Friends,
Some years are better than others. 2008 was such a year for the
Trust. But this is not an annual report. – I don’t write that
often! However, I do want to inform you of a few important
milestones, as well as significant work in progress. For a
short, colourful and interactive overview, please visit
http://www.croptrust.org/GlobalSupplyFood/
The big underlying question is are
we making progress in achieving the Trust’s goal of ensuring the
conservation of crop diversity to meet the challenges of the
future such as climate change and population growth? I’ll let
you answer that question for yourself.
- The Trust initiated what
is probably the quantitatively largest biological rescue
project in history. Over the course of the next 3 years,
the project, carried out mainly by developing country
partners around the world financed and backstopped by the
Trust, will rescue 100,000 distinct crop varieties that
otherwise would face extinction. Who knows what valuable
traits for heat tolerance, disease and pest resistance and
nutritional qualities will be saved as a result!
Additionally, we are working on improved techniques for
conserving certain crops, particularly root and tuber crops.
- We now have long-term
(essentially never-ending) contracts with the holders of
some of the largest and most important collections of
banana, barley, bean, cassava, chickpea, faba bean, forages,
grass pea, lentil, pearl millet, rice, sorghum, wheat and
yam. These contracts are a beginning – they don’t cover all
crops or every important collection, nor do they defray all
conservation costs. But we are now providing close to $2
million a year to underpin globally unique and critical crop
diversity collections. These collections are the most
diverse, most accessible and best-managed collections in the
world, and are the main source of genetic resources for the
world’s plant breeders. But none are financially secure.
Eventually, we need to have an endowment sufficiently
large to protect all the diversity of all the crops,
forever.
- The Svalbard Global
Seed Vault opened in February 2008. This is the world’s
agricultural insurance policy, offering protection against
loss of diversity (due to natural disasters, wars, equipment
failures, accidents) that can plague even the best of
genebanks. Discovery Channel listed it as one of the
world’s nine biggest science projects. Time Magazine
hailed it as one of 2008’s greatest inventions. CBS 60
Minutes had a segment on the Vault with great film
footage. See it at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/03/20/60minutes/main3954557.shtml.
Additional print and visual media stories about the Trust
and the Seed Vault can be accessed at:
http://www.croptrust.org/main/articles.php
- The purpose of conserving
diversity is to use it! If we want crops to be
adapted to new climates, then we’ll have to search through
genebank collections to find the appropriate genetic traits
and begin the process of integrating them into new varieties
for use by farmers. We have initiated a competitive
grants system to finance screening of collections for
traits useful for climate change adaptation.
Currently we’re supporting projects involving a dozen
different crops.
- Working with partners such
as Bioversity International and USDA, the Trust is
catalyzing the development of non-proprietary software
to help genebanks oversee and organize their operations. The
beta version is due out this month. In addition, a “one-stop
shop,” a “Google.com” for plant breeders is in the works.
This will enable plant breeders to search, find, and acquire
needed traits from genebanks around the world, rather than
interact with them one-by-one, navigating different systems
and languages.
- During 2008 we made good
progress towards our financial goal: we received the
largest grant in our history from an individual, $1 million
from Amy Goldman through the Lillian Goldman Charitable
Trust. The Grade 4 Class of Colombia Grammar School
in New York City did their part with a contribution raised
through various activities. And, significantly, a new US
Farm Bill was signed into law authorizing a $60 million
contribution to the Trust’s endowment. Will Congress now
appropriate the funds? We hope to see positive news in 2009.
Looking Forward: Will 2009
be the year in which we completely endow a crop, when we
secure the entire diversity of a crop forever, and announce for
the first time that the job is done for wheat or chickpea, or…?
Maybe. If it happened with the panda bear the trumpets would
blare. But it may be more important if it happens with wheat.
We’ll need a particularly far-sighted donor to step forward and
make it possible. What would it take? Depending on the crop,
less than the proportional amount that Princeton University has
in its endowment for 3 of its students. Remarkable, isn’t it?
The Trust is spearheading the formulation of an exciting, even
“revolutionary,” strategy for the collection and conservation of
the wild botanical relatives of our food crops. These
biological resources contain a huge amount of untapped and
endangered diversity of inestimable utility in helping
agriculture cope with climate change. We have also outlined a
methodology for conserving the world’s root and tuber crops,
which are so important to food security of the poor, and yet so
often neglected by both the public and private sector.
In both cases, our goals are concrete, the benefits are
stupendous, the costs are reasonable, and the strategy is
passionately pragmatic. For a fraction of the funds that it
would take to attempt to save a wild animal species, we can
guarantee the conservation of hundreds of wild crop species,
critical to future agricultural productivity and food security.
Forever. Or we can secure the diversity of “orphan crops” such
as cassava, taro or yam. Forever. (I hope potential donors are
listening!)
We know for sure we will be rescuing tens of thousands of crop
varieties in the coming months. We’ll be securing their
conservation in genebanks managed according to international
standards, with a safety duplicate copy in the Svalbard Global
Seed Vault. The Trust will provide critical operating funds to
key genebanks and the Seed Vault, and we will work steadily to
fashion these efforts into a global system capable of protecting
the biological foundation of agriculture for at least as long as
we’ll need food and agriculture. That’s a long, long time.
As always, we appreciate your support and welcome your ideas,
comments and even your criticisms.
With best regards,
Cary Fowler
Executive Director
The Global Crop Diversity
Trust |
|
