Sixth mass extinction of wildlife also threatens global food supplies / Guardians of the grain. By Chitrangada Choudhury
The sixth mass
extinction of global wildlife already under way is seriously threatening the
world’s food supplies, according to experts. “Huge proportions of
the plant and animal species that form the foundation of our food supply are
just as endangered [as wildlife] and are getting almost no attention,” said Ann
Tutwiler, director general of Bioversity International, a research group
that published
a new report on Tuesday.
“If there is one thing
we cannot allow to become extinct, it is the species that provide the food that
sustains each and every one of the seven billion people on our planet,” she
said in an article for the Guardian. “This ‘agrobiodiversity’ is a precious
resource that we are losing, and yet it can also help solve or mitigate many
challenges the world is facing. It has a critical yet overlooked role in
helping us improve global nutrition, reduce our impact on the environment and
adapt to climate change.”
Three-quarters of the
world’s food today comes from just 12 crops and five animal species and this
leaves supplies very vulnerable to disease and pests that can sweep through
large areas of monocultures, as happened in the Irish
potato famine when a million people starved to death. Reliance on only
a few strains also means the world’s fast changing climate will cut yields just
as the demand from a growing global population is rising.
There are tens of
thousands of wild or rarely cultivated species that could provide a richly
varied range of nutritious foods, resistant to disease and tolerant of the
changing environment. But the destruction of wild areas, pollution and
overhunting has started a
mass extinction of species on Earth. The focus to date has been on wild
animals – half
of which have been lost in the last 40 years – but the new report
reveals that the same pressures are endangering humanity’s food supply, with at
least 1,000 cultivated species already endangered.
Tutwiler said saving
the world’s agrobiodiversity is also vital in tackling the number one cause of
human death and disability in the world – poor diet, which includes both too
much and too little food. “We are not winning the battle against obesity and
undernutrition,” she said. “Poor diets are in large part because we have very
unified diets based on a narrow set of commodities and we are not consuming
enough diversity.”… read more:
Half a century ago, we had over a lakh rice varieties - a stunning diversity in taste, nutrition, pest-resistance and, crucially, in this age of climate change and natural disasters, adaptability to agro-climatic conditions. As eminent rice scientist R.H. Richharia wrote in his 1966 classic Rices of India, Indian farmers knew how to cultivate rice with growing durations ranging from 60 to 200 days. There were varieties they grew at sea level, on farms 7,000 feet higher, and on a range of lands in between. Some varieties could grow in 20-50 feet of water. Others could make do with annual rainfall of hardly 25-30 inches. Yet others were saline-tolerant.
Today, much of this
biodiversity is irretrievably lost, forced out by decades of Green Revolution agriculture, where
‘high-yield’ hybrids and varieties were pushed, with petrochemical inputs
(pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers) and associated technologies. Such
‘superior’ varieties are estimated to constitute over 80% of India’s rice
acreage.
Koraput is often
depicted as a ‘backward’ region. But its vast, undulating landscape has
historically been among the world’s leading areas for rice diversification. And
even as hybrid varieties have colonised much of India’s paddy fields, Koraput’s
loyalty to the local endures. In the 1950s an
official survey found that farmers here grew over 1,700 kinds of rice. And
farmers like Kamli are the reason that a sliver of India’s rice diversity still
survives.
A grassroots movement
in Koraput, with over 1,400 farmer-conservators at its heart, is one of other
such groups now trying to safeguard what remains of this genetic-cultural
wealth. The effort is anchored by ecologist Dr. Debal Deb, aided by staff from
a local organisation, Living Farms... read more: http://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/agriculture/guardians-of-the-grain/article19735976.ece
