International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture

Not many people know this, but under the Food and Agriculture Organization, set up under the auspices of the United Nations, a treaty known as The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was signed in 2001 to allow participants to share their plant genetic resources and to share in the profits. The preamble to the treaty states that "all countries depend very largely on plant genetic resources for food and agriculture that originated elsewhere" (source). The considerations in the preamble also state that:

• " ... plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are the raw material indispensable for crop genetic improvement, whether by means of farmers’ selection, classical plant breeding or modern biotechnologies, and are essential in adapting to unpredictable environmental changes and future human needs ..."

• "Affirming also that the rights recognized in this Treaty to save, use, exchange and sellfarm-saved seed and other propagating material, and to participate in decision-making regarding, and in the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from, the use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture, are fundamental to the realization of Farmers’ Rights, as well as the promotion of Farmers’ Rights at national and international levels"

• "Aware that questions regarding the management of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are at the meeting point between agriculture, the environment and commerce, and convinced that there should be synergy among these sectors"

The full text can be downloaded in PDF format here: http://www.fao.org/docrep/011/i0510e/i0510e00.htm.

Data on the FAO website shows that Malaysia is a party to this Plant Treaty. Malaysia's accession took place on the 5th of May 2003. (source) Notably absent are Korea, Japan and China: Why? Regionally, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia are parties to the treaty but Singapore is not. Cambodia, Myanmar and Laos are also parties whereas Vietnam is not.

A press release by the FAO, First fruits of plant gene pact, dated 1st June 2009, states:

• The Treaty established "a global pool compris(ing) of 64 food crops that make up more than one million samples of known plant genetic resources."
• "... whenever a commercial product results from the use of this gene pool and that product is patented, 1.1 percent of the sales of the product must be paid to the Treaty’s benefit-sharing fund."
• "... agricultural biodiversity, which is the basis for food production, is in sharp decline due the effects of modernization, changes in diets and increasing population density."
• "About three-quarters of the genetic diversity found in agricultural crops has been lost over the last century, and this genetic erosion continues."
  
• "It is estimated that there were once 10,000 types of food crops. Today, only 150 crops feed most of the world's population, and just 12 crops provide 80 percent of dietary energy from plants, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing almost 60 percent."

Plant diversity is necessary for us to secure our future. The threats would seem to come from pests, fungus, predators and other such destroyers. When the majority of crops are genetically alike, they are all susceptible to the same enemies. Today a propagation technique known as micropropagation offers the ability for growers to cultivate thousands of plants from a single source, essentially cloning the source plant at a manifold increase compared to normal propagation techniques using division of roots and transplanting cuttings of shoots. The resulting plants are all susceptible to the same types of pests because they are genetically alike, being clones from the same source. The following reports illustrate the gravity of the problem:

• LA Times, 2009 June 14th: A 'time bomb' for world wheat crop. "Crop scientists fear the Ug99 fungus could wipe out more than 80% of worldwide wheat crops as it spreads from eastern Africa. It has already jumped the Red Sea and traveled as far as Iran. Experts say it is poised to enter the breadbasket of northern India and Pakistan, and the wind will inevitably carry it to Russia, China and even North America -- if it doesn't hitch a ride with people first."
• Popular Science, 2005 June 19th: Can this fruit be saved? "Until the early 1960s, American cereal bowls and ice cream dishes were filled with the Gros Michel, a banana that was larger and, by all accounts, tastier than the fruit we now eat. Like the Cavendish, the Gros Michel, or "Big Mike," accounted for nearly all the sales of sweet bananas in the Americas and Europe. But starting in the early part of the last century, a fungus called Panama disease began infecting the Big Mike harvest. The malady, which attacks the leaves, is in the same category as Dutch Elm disease. It appeared first in Suriname, then plowed through the Caribbean, finally reaching Honduras in the 1920s. (The country was then the world's largest banana producer; today it ranks third, behind Ecuador and Costa Rica.)Growers adopted a frenzied strategy of shifting crops to unused land, maintaining the supply of bananas to the public but at great financial and environmental expense-the tactic destroyed millions of acres of rainforest. By 1960, the major importers were nearly bankrupt, and the future of the fruit was in jeopardy."

Another organisation set up by the United Nations, the Global Crop Diversity Trust, seeks to preserve and conserve world food crop diversity for the purposes of world food security. From its mission statement:

• "The conservation of crop diversity is neither technologically complicated, nor, considering the importance of the task, expensive. The varieties of many of the most important crops can be simply stored as seed in freezers."
• "Currently, with no secure funding, many of the world’s 1500 genebanks know neither what is being stored on their shelves, nor even whether the seed is alive or dead."
• "Providing the backdrop to the Trust's action is an international consensus on the importance of this issue. Nations of the world have adopted a number of international agreements recognizing the need to conserve crop diversity and confirming the important role of collections maintained in genebanks. Among these are the Convention on Biological Diversity (1992), the Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (1996); and the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (2001)."
• "Achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the priorities for development agreed by all members of the United Nations, will require crop diversity to be effectively conserved, and the Trust directly contributes to three of the goals: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger (Goal 1), to ensure environmental sustainability (Goal 7) and to develop a global partnership for development (Goal 8)."

The Trust is also building a vault in Svalbard, Norway, to store seeds which will preserve the world's natural resources. The "Arctic Seed Vault" is supposed to have been completed in 2007. From the website:

"Permafrost and thick rock will ensure that even without electricity, the samples will remain frozen. The vault’s construction has been funded by the Norwegian government as a service to the world community."

The official site for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault can be accessed here. The history of the Svalbard Vault can be accessed here. However it may be noted that the permafrost is at danger of melting, given the trends of global warming.

CICERO (Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research - Oslo) set up by the Norwegian government reported in this article dated 12/12/2002, The permafrost on Svalbard and in Norway is thawing. Another CICERO article, dated 28/4/2009 is also of interest: Artic communities challenged when temperature rises. On 9/1/2009 the Environmental Directorates in Norway reported that "temperatures in Norway appear to be following the same trend as the global mean temperature".

The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the origins and variations of the world "temperature" as follows:

• 1533, "fact of being tempered," also "character or nature of a substance," from L. temperatura "a tempering, moderation," from temperatus, pp. of temperare "to moderate" (see temper). Sense of "degree of heat or cold" first recorded 1670 (Boyle), from L. temperatura, used in this sense by Galileo. Meaning "fever, high temperature" is attested from 1898.

The European Research News Centre published, on 02/10/2001, an article titled The Permafrost Is Melting.

It is without a doubt that the world's temperature is increasing. While the sustainability of agriculture may depend on conserving biological diversity in the long run, another issue which must be examined is agriculture in a changing climate. Perhaps nations like ours will one day be discussing dryland agriculture, i.e. the art of agriculture in desert areas.