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In the last few years a compelling new argument for the
conservation of biodiversity has been creeping to the fore in the agricultural
policy arena. The argument is not new to the majority of the world's farmers
and rural communities, but it has come as something of a shock to academics
and the technical whizzes that created the so-called "Green Revolution"
and its more recent incarnation, the Biotech Revolution.
After decades years of focusing on developing a handful
of commodity crops and blanketing them across the globe, policy makers
and agricultural scientists are being faced with what is to them, a new
reality. They are having to recognise that producing bushel upon bushel
of rice, wheat and potatoes does not add up to food security. In fact,
in many cases, increasing commodity yields has quite the opposite effect
-- decreasing food security at the local level and increasing vulnerability.
Recent research has shown that the importance of crop
staples in community food supplies has been greatly overestimated. "Partner"
species -- a term which refers to wild plants and animals, semi-domesticated
and domesticated livestock and crops (other than the staple crops) --
play a critical role in ensuring food and livelihood security for countless
families and communities around the world. The drive towards commodity-based
agriculture seriously threatens both the food and livelihood security
for millions of people.
These partner species are important for achieving nutritional
balance in the diet, and are particularly important for ensuring food
security for women, children and the poor, who rely heavily on them. In
times of stress, such as famine, wild plants literally keep people alive
when they would otherwise perish. In addition, many partner species have
significant economic value by preventing the need for cash expenditure
and providing ready sources of income to cash-poor households. Partner
species also have cultural value and less well defined "existence"
values associated with wilderness areas and wild resources.
How Many Plants Feed the World?
When Christine and Robert Prescott-Allen asked this question
they came up with rather different answers from their peers. Common figures
in the scientific literature quote between 7 and 30 crops that provide
the vast majority of the world's food supply. The Prescott-Allens put
the figure at well over 100. Their study examined FAO food production
data for 146 countries and used different methods of analysis than other
researchers: using supply instead of production data; examining several
indicators rather than a single one; and employing national rather than
global data. The limitations of other researchers' methodologies mean
that important crops such as taro (Colocasia esculenta), cowpea
(Vigna unguiculata) and olive (Olea europaea) are overlooked.
As the Prescott-Allens point out, to conclude that grains like fonio (Digitaria
exilis) and quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) are unimportant, is
"to conclude that the people of Guinea, Gambia and Bolivia who
rely on them are unimportant".
Their findings suggest that 103 species contribute 90%
of the world's plant food supply. This is much higher than previous figures,
but is also considered by the Prescott-Allens to be "very much of
an underestimate", because of the limitations of the data they had
to work with. The FAO data ignores several countries, such as Ethiopia
(a global biodiversity hot-spot and centre of origin for a significant
number of food plants); the figures mask regional differences within countries;
production in home gardens is excluded from the data; and dietary importance
is measured only in terms of fat, protein and calorific content, excluding
many plants which are valuable in other ways, such as being key sources
of vitamins or making staples more palatable.
The Importance of "Wild" foods
The Prescott-Allen study focuses on cultivated crops.
But it is not just domesticated plants that have been overlooked. "Wild"
resources harvested in agricultural and forested areas are also of crucial
importance. An ongoing project entitled "The Hidden Harvest"
by researchers at IIED demonstrates clearly that wild resources are important
over the whole range of rural livelihood systems, and are not limited
to the exclusive preserve of classical "hunting and gathering"
societies.
This study also shows that the term "wild"
is misleading because it implies the absence of human influence and management.
In reality, there is no clear divide between "domesticated"
and "wild" species: rather, it is a continuum resulting from
co-evolutionary relationships between humans and their environment. Much
of "the wild" is shaped by people. Many species that have long
been considered to be wild are actually carefully nurtured by people,
albeit less intensively than those cultivated in their fields. The unfamiliarity,
seeming chaos and haphazard appearance of domestic gardens has led many
Western researchers to overlook the rich complexity of these production
systems. In the same way, forests and other vegetation that extend from
the immediate neighbourhood of settlements have been assumed to be self-regulating
"wastelands", rather than productive ecosystems which are the
partial product of human design.
Failure to recognise the value of these "wastelands"
means that they are either subjected to commercial use, such as industrial
plantations, or else high external input agriculture is introduced, displacing
more diverse traditional agricultural systems. Either of these fates has
grave implications for both people's livelihoods and the maintenance of
biological diversity, as will be discussed below.
Complexity Breeds Diversity
Wild foods are incorporated into the livelihood strategies
of most rural people -- be they pastoralists, shifting cultivators, continuous
croppers or hunter-gatherers. These convenient pigeon holes belie a more
complex reality -- that these different livelihood systems often contain
many of the same components woven together in different ways. The labels
often imply differences in emphasis on the various methods of sustaining
livelihoods. For instance, in many pastoral systems, a diet largely based
on livestock products is usefully complemented with wild foods, especially
grains. In addition, the harvesting of tree products such as gum arabic
sometimes form an important part of the pastoral economy.
Within agricultural systems, the greatest diversity of
resources is found in multi-layered, complex agroforestry systems and
home gardens. But partner species are also important even in seemingly
simple monoculture systems, such as the rice paddies that dominate South-East
Asia. The irrigation canals that are home to fish, snails, frogs and other
animals are important sources of protein and other nutrients for people.
Pathways, field edges and erosion gullies often yield useful plants. Even
plant pests, such as rodents and weeds, have important nutritional value
in certain circumstances. For the Yukpa of Venezuela and Colombia, ants
eggs and beetle larvae are a delicacy. They also supplement their diets
with grasshoppers, beetles and caterpillars, while the stingless bee provides
them with honey and wax. These dietary additions are particularly important
as domestic meat is not acceptable to all Yukpa people.
The benefits of wildlife to local livelihoods often go
unseen, yet food and income from hunting may be very significant. Contrary
to popular belief, much of the hidden harvest of game meat is derived
from small animals -- rats, mice, squirrels, rabbits, hares, small buck
and so on. Agricultural lands may be managed to encourage wildlife. Farmers
in Thailand plant particular trees on paddy irrigation ditches to attract
lizards, rats and other potential food sources. One of the advantages
of wild game over domestic animals is that they sometimes have greater
production efficiencies than domestic livestock. For example, a South
American rodent called a capybara is 3.5 times more efficient at converting
food to meat than cattle.
"Famine" Foods and Food Security
Wild foods are an important component of coping strategies
in times of severe food shortage. In the 1973 and 1984-5 Sudanese famines,
the Berti of western Sudan survived off wild grass seeds and tree fruits.
In Rajasthan in India, 25 famine foods have been described, including
grains, fodder species and the desert locust. History demonstrates the
danger of reducing access to wild resources during famine times. In Great
Britain, the famine caused by the rains of 1314-16 that killed 10-15%
of the population was more severe than previous famines because of the
reduced availability of wild resources following agricultural expansion.
Those resources that did exist were crucial -- even the king ate tree
bark.
In less extreme conditions, wild foods still form an
essential part of food security. They may be important to tide communities
over the "hunger season" that precedes the harvest, and to provide
people with the necessary energy to harvest their fields. Famine foods
may be difficult to prepare and are often less palatable than other foods,
but this is not always the case. When food is short in Bhutan, farmers
go into the hills to gather a delectable mix of wild avocados, bamboo
shoots, orchids, mushrooms and giant wild yams that grow up to one metre
in length.
Partner species are often the food of choice for daily
sustenance, not only in leaner times. Partner species may have higher
fat, protein, mineral and vitamin contents than cultivated crops. For
example, the !Kung people of Southern Africa, who depend exclusively on
'wild' foods have a higher per capita calorie intake than the average
in Africa or Asia. The average intake of calories is 2,355 per adult,
which is derived from mongongo nuts (58%), meat (30%) and wild vegetable
plants (12%). This food is obtained from hunting and gathering 84 plant
and 54 animal species over a working week of only 2.3 days at six hours
per day. This makes them much more efficient than many farmers or Westerners
who devote a much greater share of their working week to grow their food
or pay the grocer. Similarly, cutting and processing a sago tree in the
Molucca islands in Indonesia provides for the bulk of a family's calorific
needs for about three months.
The Hidden Harvest's Price Tag
Increasing attention is being paid to the assessment
of the value of partner resources, which is an essential step to redress
their neglect in the past. A full valuation of these resources requires
accounting for direct use values (for consumption or sale), indirect use
values (ecological and environmental functions) and non-use values (cultural,
religious and existence values). In practice, only direct use valuation
is considered (and this is usually limited to the marketed value of the
product), which can be useful in some instances but is often misleading.
In Zimbabwe, for instance, villagers ranked a wide range of consumption
benefits from a woodland lower than spiritual and ecosystem functions.
Respecting and preserving sacred areas is seen as essential for ensuring
good rainfall, without which they could not exist.
Putting a price tag on non-use values is extremely difficult,
since these are highly subjective. Indirect use values are also difficult
to price, because of their complexity. To account for these values requires
putting a price on a wild resource as a store-house of genetic diversity,
as a habitat for bees and bats which pollinate cultivated crops, and/or
for its role in protecting against flooding and regulating local climate.
It is important to remember that economic valuation is not simply about
making resources financially visible. It also means recognising that some
resources cannot be given a price tag, but are still essential. IIED's
Hidden Harvest project has outlined a methodology to assess the economic
importance of wild resources, which addresses some of the above concerns.
The approach combines economic principles and methods with those of Participatory
Rural Appraisal (PRA).
Whose Valuation Counts?
Wild foods have different values for different people.
For example, in some societies, men tend to concentrate their work on
agricultural plots, whereas there may be associated areas such as field
edges, contour ridges and pathways that women value highly and manage
intensively. These may be the areas where leafy vegetables, rodents or
fruits are found and harvested. The value of these marginal areas may
not be recognised by the menfolk. Women are more involved than men in
wild resource management, harvesting, processing and sale, which means
that they value the resources higher than men. Poor women in Uttar Pradesh
in India derive almost half their income from plants found in the commons,
compared with middle-class women, for whom this figure is one third, and
men, who gain only 13% of their earnings from this source. During the
1984-5 famine in Sudan, female-headed households were better off than
those headed by men because they were more knowledgeable in the collection
and preparation of wild foods.
Wild resources are more important to the poor than the
wealthy. Income derived for the collection and sale of wild resources
is particularly important for the rural poor as a source of cash for the
purchase of other goods, for education or for emergencies. In Brazil,
for example, the sale of kernels from the fruit of the babassu palm supports
more than two million people, representing an average of 35% of families'
income. In some cases, the collection, home use and sale of wild resources
represents a more lucrative option than wage labour or farming. The Huottuja
Amerindians in Venezuela net 30% more through the sale of wild palm fruits
than they would working as wage labourers.
In addition, the consumption of wild foods and cultivated
fruits often saves money by reducing the necessity to buy food. In Thailand,
for example, households living far from forests spent three times as much
money on food (excluding rice) than those living near the forest. The
use of wild resources for fuel, to make household and agricultural implements,
for building materials or medicines, also offers an important, low-cost
alternative to the cash economy, which may be prohibitive to the poor.
If anyone bothered to ask them, children would also value
wild foods highly, as they are the most frequent collectors and consumers
of wild fruits. Since children are particularly prone to malnutrition,
their foraging activities provide them with essential supplies of fats,
proteins, vitamins and minerals.
Common property resource areas (where most wild resources
are found) are valued much more highly by the poor, who are reliant on
them for their livelihoods. It is the poor, therefore, that are most adversely
affected by changes in land use and tenure. For example, in India, common
property resources provide 14-23% of the rural poor's income, rising to
42-57% in times of drought. Despite this, common property resources have
shrunk by a third to a half over the past 30 years, mainly due to privatisation,
which has had a disproportionate impact on the poor. As in many other
places, the privatisation of land has had many further negative effects
in rural India. Crops grown on land converted to private arable land yield
poorly, and productivity may be lower than the total returns from harvesting
the former common land. Changes have increased inequities with rural societies
with disadvantaged groups ending up with reduced access to resources.
Changed tenure has resulted in increased environmental pressure on remaining
common property resources, resulting in the disintegration of traditional
controls over resource use.
The Impact of Agricultural Intensification
It is clear that wild resources are of great importance
to communities in a number of ways. This is not reflected, however, in
most modern agricultural research and practice. Policy makers, researchers
and agribusinessmen remain transfixed by the goal of increasing yields
of the main commodity and food crops through the application of external
inputs. This approach has had serious implications for people's livelihoods
and the maintenance of genetic diversity:
* As cultivated areas expand and traditional agroecosystems
are simplified, the availability of wild resources diminishes. In many
cases, particularly for the poor, loss of these resources has reduced
food security. Dependence on a narrow range of species increases vulnerability
to disasters such as pest attack , disease or drought. This is not a phenomenon
unique to the Green Revolution or even the 20th century, as Jules Pretty
described in his account of the agricultural revolution in 17th-19th century
Britain.
* Loss of resource diversity may also mean less available
genetic diversity for future agricultural adaptation.
* The promotion and imposition of "improved"
varieties of crops has forced many people to abandon their diverse production
systems and adopt new technological packages. This has sometimes shifted
farming responsibilities from women to men, further disenfranchising women,
who usually have the greatest knowledge of production systems, and particularly
of the importance of wild resources. Had women had more of a say in the
promotion of Green Revolution agriculture technologies, the result might
have been quite different. Agroecologist Miguel Altieri often recounts
a delightful story of how Chilean women, suspicious of their husbands'
enamourment with Green revolution agriculture, hid traditional varieties
in their petticoats, planting them surreptitiously amongst the new, uniform
varieties their spouses had adopted.
* The untold wealth of indigenous knowledge that creates
the rich and complex production systems fast being smothered by the plague
of uniformity is disappearing as fast as the forests themselves. This
knowledge affords people the adaptability and resourcefulness that is
so critical at times of stress, such as drought or crop failure.
* New farming techniques often require farmers to invest
more time (and money) into agriculture, which may reduce time for other
livelihood activities.
* The increased use of pesticides may kill off "pests"
or "weeds" that form an important dietary or economic component
of livelihood strategies. Fertiliser inputs increase the vigour and dominance
of commodity crops, as well as some pervasive weed species, at the expense
of the diversity of partner species at the field edge and growing amongst
the main crop. These chemicals also pollute water supplies, which have
rebound effects on health, not only of people but on the animals (wild
and domesticated) on which they feed, and also on the environment that
sustains them.
* Increased dependence on commodity crops, and the inputs
these need, makes farmers vulnerable to price fluctuations. A diverse
cropping system which includes access to wild resources can provide a
buffer against the vagaries of local and international markets.
Where to From Here?
Long-term food security will continue to depend on wild
genetic resources. Genes from wild plants and animals have been the sources
of agricultural innovation for centuries, and will continue to be so.
Much of the genetic diversity on which the future sustainability of agriculture
depends is found in and around farmers' fields, in village woodlands and
on grazing lands. Wild resources and farmer's varieties are critical to
enable plants, animals and humans to adapt to ecological change. They
will become more and more important as agriculture spreads further into
marginal lands, such as areas of degraded soil, cleared forest areas and
upland slopes. Global climate change may also put new pressures on existing
crops, requiring their adaptation.
The most effective way of conserving this crucial genetic
pool is in situ: in farmers fields, in women's home gardens, in
village woodland areas and in protected areas. This is not anything new
-- it is what millions of people have been doing quietly, modestly, for
centuries. The incorporation of indigenous crops and other native plant
germplasm in the design of self-sustaining agroecosystems will ensure
the maintenance of diversity. Agricultural research needs to be conducted
with the custodians of this living genetic database and the genius that
goes with it -- in their fields, gardens and forests. The few progressive
initiatives which have married on-farm conservation with ex situ conservation
(via locally-sited but more familiar, refrigerated gene banks) show the
benefits such an approach can have both for meeting local food production
needs and conserving biodiversity for the benefit for the local and international
communities.
Protected areas pose a special challenge for the conservation
of livelihoods and biodiversity. They have long been considered by many
to be the best means of preserving areas rich in biodiversity, and they
now cover almost 10% of the earth's surface. Traditionally parks and people
have been seen to be in mutual opposition, and a "keep out"
policy has been widely adopted. However, it now appears that this has
had adverse effects not only on the food security and livelihoods of people
living in and around protected areas, but also on the diversity and ecological
status of the protected areas themselves. Lack of livelihood security
ultimately undermines conservation objectives as poverty and rates of
environmental degradation intensify in the land around protected areas.
Open protests have become common in many countries, and
it is becoming clear that a new approach is required. If local people
were to be made partners in the management of these areas everyone would
gain. Their vested interest in maintaining the area would reduce conflict
and cost, and their extensive knowledge would be an asset to managing
the resources sustainably.
Access and Rights to Wild Resources
There is a global trend towards restricting access to
communal lands, where many important wild resources reside. This undermines
local peoples' traditional rights to and regulation of wild resource use,
and results in unsustainable exploitation. Recent research suggests that
reinstating legal access and increasing the economic value of wild resources
can promote resource conservation by making sustainable use a viable option.
Experience has shown that for the economic returns from
common property resources to reach their users, effective institutions
and incentives for management are essential. Indigenous institutions often
exist for this purpose. But increased pressure on limited common lands
can mean that such institutions are weakened and cannot adapt fast enough
to the changing conditions. Promoting effective institutions for wild
resource management represents a major challenge for policy makers. Success
appears to hinge on several factors, including:
* Small, relatively homogeneous community user groups
with common goals
* Visible and well-defined resource areas
* Presence of a resource with high monetary value
* A system of enforceable rules supported by an enabling
legal and institutional framework.
There is good evidence to show that almost every part
of the globe has been modified or managed humans at some time in history.
Human influences have often actively maintained and enhanced biodiversity
in forests, wetlands, grasslands, agricultural areas and other areas from
which rural people have derived their livelihoods. They have built up
detailed knowledge of the uses and properties of wild species, and have
experimented with crop breeding and genetic improvement. Yet existing
legal frameworks do not acknowledge the innovations, labour and knowledge
of rural people which have shaped the wild. Local people's rights to use,
access and profit from the genetic resources they have nurtured must be
secured for the sake of their own livelihoods, for the conservation of
biological diversity and for the sustainable management of our global
resources.
This article is largely based on the data and
analysis from a recent publication issued by IIED: The Hidden
Harvest -- the Value of Wild Resources in Agricultural Systems -- A Summary.,
written by Irene Guijt, Fiona Hinchcliffe and Mary Melnyk. It is an indepth,
fully footnoted and referenced overview of the importance of the Hidden
Harvest. For more information, and to obtain a copy, write to the authors
at IIED, 3, Endsleigh Street, London, WC1H 0DD, UK. Fax: (44-171-388.2826)
E-mail: iiedagri@gn.apc.org
Other sources:
* Ian Scoones, Mary Melnyk and Jules Pretty, eds. (1992).
The Hidden Harvest -- Wild Foods and Agricultural Systems. A Literature
Review and Annotated Bibliography. IIED, London.
* RAFI (1995). Farmer-Led Food Security -- Community
Genius and the Integration of Food, Health, Environment, and Knowledge
Security. RAFI, Canada.
* Christine and Robert Prescott-Allen (1990). How Many
Plants Feed the World? Conservation Biology, Vol. 4, No.4, pp 365-374.
December 1990.
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