Agrobiodiversity: variety beats performance

Home

Agrobiodiversity: variety beats performance

Petersilie auf dem Viktualienmarkt in Köln

Nowadays in the agrarian industry the companies put their emphasis on farm animals and useful plants which deliver high earnings. Thru breeding of certain performance features of the food donators also disadvantages arise: Plants and animals become susceptible for illnesses and are no more optimally adapted to nature. They only serve industrial guidelines. This also has an economic impact: With pesticides and antibiotics the results of the overbreeding must be fought. Thus a serious disadvantage originates from a putative advantage, also for the consumers who must handle troubled food. Therefore, a change in production seems urgently necessary.

Organisations and politicians already do suggestions for improved methods and promote the preservation of old, robust species and kinds in agriculture. In 2010 the year of biodiversity was proclamed. A new consumer behaviour also meets this trend: The "Bio" movement in the food sector booms. Consumers wish a bigger variety and better quality. For this they are also ready to pay more. However, the masses accept this new quality conscious not yet. There the low price still counts - quality is a secondary matter. The SlowFood movement also provides for clarification and demands payable food, which is seasonally adapted and locally generated.

The variety of animal races and plant species developed through thousands of years. The especially suitable food donators were put out in the different regions to different circumstances of nature. By the adaptation to these basic conditions also different qualities developed. Earlier the multiple use and robustness stood in the foreground. In the course of the industrialisation and the demand for supply of the growing cities the companies turned to high-performance in the production which then showes the known susceptibilities. Monocultures have still another disadvantage: The ecological balance with nature in the sphere of the agricultures is endangered. The return to a production, based on diversity and environmental compatibility seems advantageous all together.

Today three kinds of rye control 95 percent of the harvest. Two races dominate 90 percent of milk cattle. What can be done? There are three approaches: In institutes and botanical gardens the almost extinct kinds are preserved and stored, so that they be inserted into the genes of overbred sorts when required to provide for robustness. Then farms are urged to plant and breed older kinds, so that these can be preserved. Finally, one can also preserve the variety by letting the endangered species live und reproduce in their natural surroundings.

Also consumers (or "co-producers", how the SlowFood movement put it) contribute with conscious behaviour to an improvement of the situation. When they pay more attention to quality and ask for regional products, the industry will react with an offer of bigger variety and by that do a service to nature, which should have been done already a long time ago.

Ralph Bloemer, InterMopro.de