permaculture

[Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jonathan Latham <jrlatham@bioscienceresource.org>
Date: Sun, Feb 28, 2016 at 9:55 PM
Subject: [SANET-MG] The Centrality of Seed: Building Agricultural
Resilience Through Plant Breeding
To: sanet-mg@googlegroups.com


Dear Friends and Colleagues

Published today (Mon 29 Feb 2016) on *Independent Science News*:

*The Centrality of Seed: Building Agricultural Resilience Through Plant
Breeding*
By Salvatore Ceccarelli

http://www.independentsciencenews.org/un-sustainable-farming/the-centrality-of-seed-building-agricultural-resilience-through-plant-breeding/

*Synopsis:*  Once the exclusive domain of farmers, plant breeding is now
often practiced without any meaningful farmer input. The downsides
associated with this transition have hardly been explored. They include
losses of genetic diversity, local adaptability, plant robustness, flavour,
nutritional quality, and many other important crop traits. In particular,
commercial seed breeding focuses on the specific needs of chemical
agriculture. Commodity crops are thus bred for close spacing and short
stature so farmers have to buy more seeds per acre and herbicides to
suppress the weeds. GMOs have extended this trend and are even bred to sell
specific herbicides. By abandoning seed saving and animal breeding, farmers
have thus surrendered control over the long-term direction of agriculture.
Its future is now almost exclusively in the hands of the chemical industry
while breeding for organic agriculture is almost nonexistent.
But can breeding be returned to farmer control without sacrificing
short-term benefits? Salvatore Ceccarelli is a leading international
practitioner and proponent of farmer-led participatory and evolutionary
plant breeding methods. He works with diverse crops and here describes how
even common commercial varieties can be used as the gene pools from which
to successfully select high-quality locally-adapted varieties.

Apologies for any cross posting.

Yours sincerely
Jonathan

Jonathan Latham, PhD
Executive Director
The Bioscience Resource Project
Ithaca, NY 14850 USA

www.independentsciencenews.org
and
www.bioscienceresource.org

jrlatham@bioscienceresource.org
Skype: jonathanlatham2
Tel: 1-607-319-0279

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits
and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic
society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society
constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of
our country.”—Edward Bernays, Propaganda

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-- 
Lawrence F. London
lfljvenaura@gmail.com
https://sites.google.com/site/avantgeared/