Science and Technology Mailing List Archive

["James BISCOE" <<address removed>>]

Bank Holiday Monday and two thoughts occur to me. The work may already be in 
hand, if so I shall be pleased to hear about it and to be corrected. If not....

SWIDDEN AGRICULTURE
Swidden agriculture is still widespread. Typically it tends to be low 
productivity and to be land use extensive, often because of the agroecological 
conditions prevailing. Farmers would do better if they could in my experience.
Ester Boserup (do I recollect correctly?)some years ago put forward the concept 
of a progression from hunting and gathering to herding to swidden agriculture 
eventually getting to multicropping, whereby the intensity of agricultural 
production per unit of land gradually increased.

Has significant work been done already to facilitate the progression along 
Boserup's continuum from swidden to sedentary agriculture? If this work has 
been done why is it not being more widely adopted? If it has not been done (and 
when I looked into it several years ago there seemed to be a dearth of 
recommendations) is this an area of work which DfID could usefully support?

SELECT AND VEGETATIVELY PROPAGATE
Most crops suffer from diseases of one kind or another.
Breeding is long term, risky in its progress, expensive and does not always 
improve the profit potential of the enterprise.

Within many populations of a particular crop there exist elite lines which have 
resistance or tolerance to the particular diseases.
In many instances he susceptibility to a disease can be screened for by known 
techniques.
Relatively simple horticultural techniques can be used to vegetatively 
propagate the elite selections for distribution to farmers.
By selecting from existing plant materials the production characteristics are 
known in advance, unlike what someone described as the lottery of breeding.
It is also possible that the process of multiplication can be undertaken by the 
research organisation which did the selections, in order that it is carefully 
done particularly when numbers are small (it could be franchised out when a 
selection is well established?) and to allow further reselection, and, sales of 
planting materials be used to fund further work.
Governments are typically against such recycling of revenue and want revenue 
paid to the Consolidated Revenue fund and to make departments bid for funds as 
usual.
There have been some instances of change in this area.
Encouragement might perhaps be given by a match funding process whereby every 
declared unit of sale attracts a unit of grant funding from DfID?

Quality control? Farmers will not buy materials which don't confer significant 
benefits.
Similar processes can also be used to improve productivity per plant, quality 
of product produced, synchronicity of flowering and thereby harvesting and no 
doubt other traits which I have not thought of?

Tell me DfID or some other organisation is doing this widely and I will be 
happy to be proved out of date or out of touch.
If not is this an avenue of self sustaining work which could usefully be 
embarked on through DfID support to research/extension/agriculture?
Thanks
James Biscoe
3/5/04
0845hrs