2345_RI_Margherita_Volpe

BCFN Young Earth Solutions YES! A Germplasma Bank for Subsistence Economy’s Communities Abstract: The project "A Germplasma Bank for Subsistence Economy's Communities" aims to improve food global sustainability, in order to meet both human's needs and the restraintment of the damages on biodiversity produced by the intensive agricolture.

This institution had been imaginated on the basis of already implemented examples of such a bank, introducing, as innovative element, an immediate operative mechanism.

The germplasma bank hyothesized aim to be an exchange institution for the seeds coming from subsistence economy's communities, so that improving their chances to survive as concretes options to the market model.

Fundamental element of the project is the complete respect of the traditional logic: in the exchange system, credits are given on the base of the number, not the rarity, of the varieties provided, lendings and restitutions are consituted of germplasma and free from any kind of accumulated interest, and, most of all, is not required to the communities to alterate the ammount of their productions in order to generate a surplus for the economic market. Furthermore, this institution would garantee for the agryfood industry -but also for research institutes- a database of genetic informations fundamental to restraint the weaknesses of the intensive agricolture, such as environmental depletion, vulnerability to pathogens and loss of biodiversity.

Author

Margherita Volpe

A GERMPLASMA BANK FOR SUBSISTENCE ECONOMY’S COMMUNITIES

Biodiversity seems to be one of the key points in today’s discussions about sustainable development: in particular it relevance resoults both because of its cultural values and because it represents unexplored options for the future (option values).

A community’s ecosystems and its ecosystem services represent a capital asset that seems to be exploited in different ways acccording to cultural inclination: capitalistic propension tend to see ecosystems just in the way they are anthropological functionally (selectinc highly productives species) while mosts of the traditional societies are taking care of more then the 90% of world’s biodiversity. In the western world, farmers has selected higly reliables and productives species, intensivly coultivated, succeding in feeding an increased amount of people, in the short term, but actually selecting genetically weaks varieties.

Even though the values people place on biodiversity are differents, many evidences shows that preserving agro-alimentary varieties is the best chance to protect futures food reserves from climate and environmental changes, or potential epidemic waves. Furthermore, intensive capitalistic cultivations are responsibles of both a loss in biodiverity and of ecosistemic depletion, hard to estimate: preserving alternative production logics, as those of subsistence economies, could allow the world keep feeding a lot of people counterbalancing, at the same time, the negatives effects of intensives cultivations.

The idea of a ‘germplasma’s bank’ dedicate, “financed” and supported by (and in the logic of) substence economies, came both from accademic imputs and personal interestes’s readings. The protection of biodiversity trough germoplasma’s banks is a widespread practice: there exists many different example of this kind of institutions both at private and pubblic level; actually, the point of those institutions seems to be the preservation of biodiversity in order to garantee option values against intensive agricolture weaknesses. The innovative aspect of the project should lay in the change of the principal focus of the ‘bank’: the institution proposed wants to have a concrete and immediate operativity, involving those economies considered to be at the edge of market economy which are preserving the most of word’s biodiversity applying sustainable production logics.

The key point of the new germplasma’s bank would be to collect original varieties of agricoltural species collected from the different subsistances communities, which will receive kind of “credits” according to the number of varieties given (not to the complexity, rarity or difficulty of cultivation), that would be used to ask for other varieties that could better garantee their production from climate changes of soil depletion. Preserving those reality proposing an assistance based on the logic of the exchange, instead of the capitalistic idea of economic reversibility count (not asking them to improve their production in order to penetrate the market economy), would mean to preserve world cultural heritage of different way of living that could counterbalance the capitalistic exploitation of Earth’s resources.

User/beneficiaries

Need

Service

Subsistence economy’s community

Utilizzare sementi che garantiscano la produzione annua

Fornire varianti che possano meglio adattarsi alle condizioni ambientali o ai mutamenti sopraggiunti

Wester capitalistic market system (intensive agricolture)

Garantee different options against potential crisis of intensive agricolture

Preserve world biodiversity’s heritage

Agribusiness

Improve cultivation yield

Conservation of a study’s database to select interesting genes from original varieties acquired

Tab.1: Summary of the potential beneficiaries of the project and of the needs that will be fulfilled.

The project is thought to get to a global scope, already in the medium term (less than five years): being the heritage of the bank constituite from the contributions, in terms of seeds of original varieties, of traditional communities, its richness will depend on the number of subsistence economies involved in the project. First step of the implementation of the project should be the initialization of the institution, based in Italy, setting up the “social capital” of the society recollecting italian varieties of agricoltural species and finding contenitive structures to store the seeds (max. 1year). Secondly a ‘pilot project’ should be set up, involving 4 or 6 community (if possible, communities which are already experiencing problems of yield for their traditional cultivation). An this stage the goals will concern the evaluation of the project itself, the estimation of the time for “reintegration” for the seeds borrowed, and the detection of applicative or involvement problems (almost 2years). Thirdly, the point will move to the extention of the scope of the project, advertising the positives results of the ‘pilot study’ and trying to involve more subsistences communities in order to enrich the heritage of the ‘bank’ and allow wider and more effective exchanges. Finally, a subsequent potential stage could provide the involvement of international institution (ex. FAO), other germplasma’s banks and research institutes in the project itself.

Management costs will concern: - Management: the staff hypothesized includes experts in environmental impact evaluation (at least 2 people), an anthropologist to realise kind of ‘short enquirements’ to facilitate the involvement and the contribution of the communities in the project, conservation employees (almost 5 people for the management of the structure); - Structures: will be needed a place suitable for the conservation of the seeds, which also dispose of study spaces or laboratories for working on the heritage suitable; - Other general expenses: implementation of a website to give visibility to the results of the project in order to extend the scope of the same.

1st stage

2nd stage

3rd stage

Project setting

Pilot study

Scope extention

Objective

Project starting

Exsperimentation

Diffusion

Description

Collecting the ‘social capital’ for the bank: setting up a reserve of seeds of the italian varieties, and finding the structures for the development of the project itself.

Starting the exsperimentation: 4/6 communities (possibly experiencing decreasing returns of production) trough the assistance of operators of the project (section of original varieties, credit assignment, proposal of alternative species introduction, implementation, reintegration of bank’s heritage); evaluation of focal points of the project

Disclosure of the results of the ‘pilot experience’, involvement of other communities and enrichnesses of the heritage of the bank

Scope

Local at national level

Local but displaced

Global

Life

1year (short-term)

2years (short/medium-term)

long-term

Tab.2: Summary of the main steps of the project.

The project presents the competitive advantage of low costs, simple structures and equipments needed, and limited number of operators required. Furthermore, the project turn immediatly operative the potentialities of the institution, not only as reserve of biodiversity but also as a service for a wide range of users (traditional communities and study’s institutes). The original element is precisely to provide a concrete service in complete accordance with the production logics of alternatives economies (exchange, “seeds for seeds”, no pressures to enter the capitalistic economy).

The main potential risk of the project would concern the communication and the involvement of the traditional communities: to mitigate the problem would be useful to involve anthropologist experienced in realizing ‘short inquirements studies’ focused on traditional production strategies, communication and introduction strategies.

To sum up, the project, as proposed, presents two main relevant points: first of all, the possibility to meet (immediately and concretely) the needs of different categories of beneficiaries (traditional communities, capitalistic society, agribusiness); secondly, it is “duble-functionally”, both as a place of exchange and as a reserve of biodiversity. Furthermore, protecting subsistence’s economies would mean to counterbalance the negative aspects of the intensive capitalistic agricolture, both in terms of soil and climate depletion, and of loss of biodiveristy.