Drinking the Kool-Aid while attempting to be an unbiased researcher

I realized today that I’ve spend the past week and a half drinking the Bioversity Kool-Aid; meaning that I’ve been surrounded by great ideas like “custodian farmers”; researchers who are really interested in “farmer first” technologies, networks, and access to resources; and in the past few days, getting a chance to talk to farmers who are involved in Bioversity’s projects here in India. Which is all great, especially considering that Bioversity’s mission aligns with my own ideological commitments. But this is something my academic committee has pushed me to think about: how will I deal with my own pro-farmer, pro-local biases when conducting my research?

One of the things I’m studying is the difference between/evolution of the scientific paradigms of “wide adaptation of crops/top-down technology transfer” and “location-specific adaptation/participatory research.” The first approach is dominant in the state-run agricultural organizations; the second (I’m hypothesizing) is more likely to crop up among NGOs and individual researchers. But, is one approach necessarily “better”? My own bias pushes me towards thinking the second approach is better, because it takes into account the local socio-economic as well as environmental conditions of farmers. But from an innovation systems perspective, we probably need some combination of both approaches. The first approach works well for large farmers on productive lands; the second works better for marginal farmers/areas. I think if I’m able to take a more even-handed (or “academically agnostic”) approach to my research, my scholarship will be better. One step I can take to reduce my bias is to be very careful in my interviews, and to carefully consider what my respondents say. In my historical research, I think the best strategy for now is just to document all relevant material, and then sort out my theoretical argument later.

Theoretically, I find the correlation of the “wide adaptation/top-down” approach with a socialized political system extremely interesting. This would require me digging into more political science than I currently have under my belt, but I think it would be really interesting to compare 20^th century agricultural development in the US, Soviet Russia, and India. For example, what was the political context; proportion of public vs. private research investment; scientific paradigms; and ultimately the success of agricultural technologies in each of these nation-states during critical periods of agricultural development? Maybe I can find someone already working on this stuff and collaborate…

In other news, baby goats are the cutest things ever and I want one!

Agroecological zones and climate

Much of my research on climate change and agriculture over the past year has focused on how innovation-- mostly biological, such as plant breeding, but also technological, such as irrigation-- has expanded the range of certain crops, such as wheat and soybeans in North America. Looking at these historical cases, we might be able to learn something about adaptation of crops to new climate zones due to climate change.

The Consultative Group for International Agriculture (CGIAR) has also picked up on this idea of climate adaptation through crop innovation. This makes perfect sense, given their historical roots in plant breeding, and their access to large repositories of plant genetic material around the world. They have lately focused on bridging gaps between climate modeling, plant breeding, and climate-tolerant crops. For example, if we can predict that the climate in Nepal is going to be similar to Bangladesh in 20 years, then Nepali farmers and plant breeders should be not only learning from their Bangladeshi counterparts, but also starting to grow Bangladeshi varieties of rice.

But Bangladesh alone has about 30 agroecological zones (see figure above). Agroecological zones are based on regional soil types and climate zones. This means that farmers in each zone are likely to differ, even if by just a little, in the type of irrigation they use, variety of crops they grow, and when they plant and harvest those crops. Agroecological zones are also useful in categorizing the maximum yield productivity of a region-- for example, rice just might grow better in certain zones.

Today many crops have mixed genetic heritages that span not just countries but continents, and we can even grow traditional Japanese rice in Australia. If we look back to the Green Revolution, Norman Borlaug introduced a variety of wheat to India that was originally bred in Mexico. Borlaug also innovated a plant breeding technique called "shuttle breeding," which is where you test a new crop in two different climate locations. This would make the plant "hardier" and able to survive in a larger climate zone.

The problem lies in reducing agriculture to a simple equation of climate and genetics. The CGIAR is falling a bit too closely into a "Seeing Like a State" mentality. The drive to simplify and cross-apply broad agricultural knowledge across regions ignores many local factors, both biophysical (types of local insects, soil salinity, climate variability) and social (gender roles in farming, innovativeness, access to resources).

I've written about these generalizations of climate vulnerability before, and how such generalized information is likely limited in its use. Climate change is not the only challenge to farmers: in fact, short term climate variability may be more important. Miguel Altieri and other agroecologists argue that local networks of agrobiodiversity and seed sharing are more important than international efforts to improve yields through modernization of agriculture. On the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, an author writes about the problems with using recent online climate-zone tools produced by the CGIAR and FAO.

So despite my skepticism about the usefulness of climate models and technological fixes, I'm extremely excited to work on this issue more in the upcoming year, and especially looking at farmer participation and innovation for climate adaptation in India.

Seed banking, 1979–1994

Seed banks, such as the so-called "Doomsday Seed Vault" have been in the news recently, and I think will play a big role in crop adaptation to climate change. As part of the Embryo Project at ASU, I've been researching the history of seed banks. I posted about Seed Collection, 1990–1979 last week.

In the early twentieth century, scientists and agriculturalists collected plants in greenhouses, botanical gardens, and fields. When scientists became concerned over the loss of plant genetic diversity due to the expansion of a few agricultural crops around the mid-century, countries and organizations created seed banks for long-term seed storage. Beginning around 1979, environmental groups objected to the limited access to seed banks and questioned the propriety of the intellectual property of living organisms. Because many of the seed banks were located in the global North yet plants were collected largely from countries in the global South, this caused prolonged controversy over the uneven flow of genetic resources. This movement of the so-called “seed wars” and the movement for biodiversity conservation intersected in ways that shaped debates over plant genetic material and seed banking. Several significant shifts in governance occurred in 1994, leading to the creation of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute and a change in the governance of several important international seed banks. 

The International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR), headquartered in Rome, Italy, oversaw many, but not all, seed banks around the world. Through the efforts of the IBPGR and different countries, plant germplasm collection exploded in the 1970s and 1980s around the world. Plant germplasm is the genetic material required for plants to reproduce, mainly seeds, but also including clones, or cuttings. As of 1993, the IBPGR had conducted more than 400 collecting missions in over 100 countries. Seed banks also proliferated during thus time. As of 1979, twenty-five seed banks for long-term storage existed in the world. By 1995, 129 countries held a total of 1061 germplasm collections.

A 1979 book by Pat Roy Mooney, Seeds of the Earth: Private or Public Resource?, set off a movement of protest against seed banking. Beginning at a 1979 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) conference, representatives from developing countries expressed discontent with the seed banking regime, citing Mooney’s arguments that genes discovered in the global South would be patented in the North, and consequently, that the plant genetic material would no longer be available to farmers in the South. Mooney and others have made the distinction between “gene rich” countries in the global South and “gene poor” countries in the global South, which nonetheless possess more resources for seed collection and storage. Erna Bennet, a scientist and FAO employee, sympathized with these concerns and advocated of farmers’ access to germplasm from her earlier work with the FAO. As a proposed solution, Bennet spearheaded a campaign for the FAO, rather than the IBPGR, to gain jurisdiction of the global seed banks. Bennet resigned from the FAO in 1983 because of unresolved conflicts.

By 1981 the issue of seed banking, and the connection between intellectual property rights and conservation, became a global issue. Developing countries feared that germplasm collected in their countries would be stored in developed countries, such as the US, and that they would be denied access to the genetic material, prompting the phrase germplasm embargo. These countries called for the principle of free exchange of plant germplasm. In 1983 the FAO held a meeting that established the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources, a voluntary, non-binding agreement, as well as an FAO Commission on Plant Genetic Resources. The International Undertaking would establish standards for the international collection and storage of plant genetic resources. The FAO believed that jurisdiction of international seed banks should be in the hands of a publicly accountable intergovernmental organization. The FAO was accountable to the United Nations, but the IBPGR and their institutional host, the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) were accountable to their donors, including the World Bank. Thus the FAO attempted to establish a Global System on Plant Genetic Resources for food and agriculture that would ostensibly replace the IBPGR. The Global System would include not just seed banks, but also on-farm conservation efforts.

The collaboration between the CGIAR and FAO revealed tensions between the organizations’ missions. Tensions between the FAO and IBPGR, both still located in Rome, Italy, continued into the early 1990s. In 1991, the IBPGR became the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI), officially ratified by the Italian government in 1994, and part of the CGIAR network. Jurisdiction over the global system of seed banks was still unclear until the United Nations Convention for Biological Diversity in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 1994, jurisdiction of the CGIAR’s twelve gene banks was transferred to the FAO.

The decisions of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 1992 had consequences for plant genetic resource conservation. The CBD framework allowed legal rights over natural resources to their countries of origin. The CBD did not extend to existing seed banks, which were at the time under the auspices of the CGIAR network, but it set a precedent for international governance of genetic material, and left a gap for governance of seed banks. The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) in 1994 further established international standards for trade of plant genetic materials. Over the next decade, the FAO developed an International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, widely adopted in 2002.

Seed banking allows long-term storage of plant germplasm, usually used for plant breeding experiments. To preserve germplasm, seed banks are kept at low temperatures and low moisture, which keeps the seed dry and stops samples from growing quickly. For long-term storage, seeds are stored in airtight vials at temperatures around -20 degrees C, and around 0 to -5 degrees C for medium-term storage. Thousands of seeds are stored for each plant variety. Samples can degrade over time, and especially in developing countries, the facilities may not be equipped for long-term storage. Most plants are stored as seed, but asexual or polyploidy crops such as potato, cassava and banana require different techniques for reproduction and storage. In the 1980s, seed banks experimented with techniques for storing these plants as tissue cultures, or “artificial seeds.” These varieties can also be propagated in test tubes for shorter-term storage. Cryopreservation, freezing seed in liquid nitrogen at extremely low temperatures, is another technique for long-term storage of plant material, but is not as widely used as it is in animal breeding and conservation.

Scientists often use the terms seed bank, gene bank, and germplasm collection interchangeably, although there are different techniques associated with storage of different plants and types of storage. Germplasm is all plant genetic material, which is limited to more than just seeds. Scholars Pistorius and Wijk assert that, in the 1980s, scientists began conceptualizing plant genetic diversity in term of individual genes rather than particular plants. The dominance of the term “gene bank” in scientific literature reflects this shift.

Sources

Busch, Lawrence, William B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Douglas Hemken, Jubel Moraga-Rojel, Timothy Koponen, and Jose de Souza Silva. Making Nature Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

CGIAR. 1971-1996 Database: 25 Years of Food and Agriculture Improvement in Developing Countries. http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/25years/25cover.html (Accessed February 11, 2012).

Damania, Abi D. “History, Achievements, and Current Status of Genetic Resources Conservation.” Agronomy Journal 100 (2008): 9–21.

Engels, J. M. M. and Hareya Fassil. “Plant and Animal Genebanks.” In The Role of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Human Nutrition, Vol. III., ed. Victor R. Squires, 144–174. Oxford, U.K.: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, 2009.

Fujii, Jo Ann, David Slade, Keith Redenbaugh, and Keith Walker. “Artificial seeds for plant propagation.” Tibtech 5 (1987): 335–339.

International Board for Plant Genetic Resources. Annual Report 1978. Rome, 1979.

Kloppenburg, Jack R., Jr. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (2nd Ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Kloppenburg, Jack R., Jr., ed. Seeds and Sovereignty: Debate Over the Use and Control of Plant Genetic Resources. Durham: Duke University Press, 1988.

Moore, Gerald and Witold Tymowski. Explanatory Guide to the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. Cambridge, UK: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Environmental Policy and Law Paper No. 57 (2005).

National Research Council. Managing Global Genetic Resources. Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1993.

Pistorius, Robin. Scientists, Plants and Politics—A History of the Plant Genetic Resources Movement. Rome: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 1997.

Pistorius, Robin and Jeroen van Wijk. The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information: Political Strategies in Crop Development. New York: CABI Publishing, 1999.

Plucknett, Donald, Nigel Smith, J. T. Williams, and N. Murthi Anishetty. Gene Banks and the World’s Food. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987.

Powledge, Fred. “The food supply’s safety net.” BioScience 45 (1995): 235–243.

Raustiala, Kal and David G. Victor. “The Regime Complex for Plant Genetic Resources.” International Organziation 58 (2004): 277–309.

Scarascia-Mugnozza, G.T. and P. Perrino. “The History of ex situ Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources.” In Managing Plant Genetic Diversity, eds. Johannes M.M. Engels, Ramanatha Rao, and Anthony Brown, 1–22. New York: CABI Publishing, 2001.

Seed collection and plant genetic diversity, 1900–1979

"Frank Meyer in Chinese Turkestan, ca. 1910," Meyer was an early plant explorer, and Meyer lemons are named after him. Photo from the National Archives. 

Seed banks, such as the so-called "Doomsday Seed Vault" have been in the news recently, and I think will play a big role in crop adaptation to climate change. As part of the Embryo Project at ASU, I've been researching the history of seed banks this is Part I: from 1990–1979. See my new post for Part II: Seed Banks, 1979–1994.

Although scientists lacked formal theories about genetics until the early 1900s, agriculturalists have long relied on genetic diversity to breed new crops. In the early 1900s, scientists began to recognize the importance of plant genetic diversity for agriculture. Scientists realized that crops could be systematically bred with their wild relatives to incorporate specific genetic traits or produce hybrids. In 1967, plant scientists led an international movement for conservation of plant genetic resources through the Food and Agricultural Organization, and later the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research. Necessary to the conservation of plant genetic resources are the collection and storage of plant germplasm—the genetic material required to propagate a plant—usually in the form of a seed.

Throughout history, farmers, scientists, explorers, botanists, and agriculturalists collected exotic plants and tested the seeds in new environments, hoping to find new agriculturally important crops. Agricultural experimenters and collectors such as Thomas Jefferson stored germplasm in fields, greenhouses, and botanical gardens. The US government became involved in 1819 the US Patent Office and Navy began the official collection of germplasm from foreign consuls. This continued until the Civil War and the formation of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1862. The USDA distributed foreign seeds to farmers and agricultural experiment stations for testing, and created the Section of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction, located in Beltsville, Maryland, in 1898.

The rise of genetic theories and the professionalization of plant breeding in the early 20th century contributed to early understandings of plant genetic diversity. Scientists such as Liberty Hyde Bailey, Rowland Harry Biffen, Hugo de Vries, and William Bateson popularized Darwinian and Mendelian concepts of natural selection and genetic laws, and their application to plant breeding. Based on de Vries’ mutation theory, scientists realized the importance of genetic variation to plant breeding. Bailey in particular strove to break the conceptual divide between crops in the field and plants in the wild, a theme that would influence plant breeding and seed storage throughout the century.

Governments in the US, Europe, the Soviet Union, Australia, and New Zealand supported early efforts at plant germplasm collection. In the early 1900s, the US commissioned famous plant explorer Frank N. Meyer, who the Meyer lemon is named after, to collect plant germplasm from exotic locations in Asia, Russia, and Europe. A Soviet botanist and plant explorer, Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887–1943), is considered a founder of theories of plant diversity, origin, and evolution. Vavilov studied plant genetics under Biffen and later Bateson in England. In the 1920s and 1930s, Vavilov raised awareness of the loss of plant genetic diversity due to the dominance of a small number of genetically similar crops, an argument that would form the basis of the movement for the conservation of plant genetic resources.

Vavilov proposed the influential theory of Centers of Origin, which were nine areas of the world where food crops originated from, such as the potato’s origin in Latin America. These areas were thought to contain the most diverse wild relatives of the crops due to evolution and genetic variation. Despite repression of Vavilov’s Darwinian ideas under Soviet Lysenckoism and Stalin, his theories spread throughout the world. Vavilov’s work inspired the botanists, plant breeders, and explorers who led the movement for conservation of plant genetic resources, including Erna Bennett (1925–2012), Otto H. Frankel (1900–1998), Jack R. Harlan (1917–1998), and John G. Hawkes (1915–2007) . The discovery of Centers of Origin increased the importance of crop wild relatives for plant germplasm collection and plant breeding. His Centers of Origin theory is now thought of as centers of diversity, because there is not always a clear genetic origin of plant varieties.

Beginning a movement for international development of seed collections, the Rockefeller Foundation [contributedTo] funded an effort to collect plant germplasm in Mexico in the 1940s. The Rockefeller Foundation launched the Mexican Agricultural Project (MAP) in 1943, which many consider the start of the Green Revolution. The MAP signaled the beginning of an era of systematic collection, evaluation, and storage of plant germplasm, in this case, maize, wheat, and potato germplasm. The MAP preceded formation of the first long-term seed storage facility, the National Seed Storage Laboratory in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1958. Prior to existing germplasm collections only provided short-term storage. After World War II, many countries, including India, Brazil, and Japan, had established “seed banks” for long-term storage of plant germplasm.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), an international organization located in Rome, Italy, became concerned about the loss of plant genetic diversity in the 1960s. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, concerns over the loss of plant genetic resources, which include everything from wild to domesticated relatives of food crops, became a high priority for the FAO. The FAO acted as a “clearing house” for plant exploration since 1948 by cataloging plant varieties and participating plant breeders and countries. The FAO also oversaw plant germplasm collections in countries around the world. In 1967 the FAO created a department of Crop Ecology and Genetic Resources, led by Bennett and R. J. Pichel.

In 1967 the Food and Agricultural Organization and International Biological Programme, of England, organized the 1967 Technical Conference on the Exploration, Utilization and Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources in Rome, Italy. This was a turning point in the movement for conservation of plant diversity. The conference popularized the term “genetic resources” and established a set of standards and plans for storage of plant genetic material outside of natural habitats and in seed banks. Two key scientists involved in the conferences, Bennett and Frankel, differed over this decision. Bennett advocated for farmer’s participation through conservation in the field, while Frankel advocated the seed banking approach. Frankel and the FAO favored the seed banking approach to conservation because it allowed plant breeders to selectively draw from stored genetic material.

Participants at the 1967 FAO conference also coined the term “genetic erosion,” meaning the loss of plant genetic diversity due to agricultural expansion. Genetic erosion became a pressing international concern after a major corn blight in 1970 in the US and the spread of coffee rust in Brazil. Echoing Vavilov, scientists highlighted the downfalls of a genetically homogenous crop population. In 1972 the US National Research Council authored an influential report, Genetic Vulnerability of Major Crops, stating a similar case.

The FAO advocated long-term conservation as a solution to genetic erosion. Yet the FAO was not a research organization, and lacked flexible funding and the ability to enact conservation methods. The FAO could not overlook the rise of international agricultural research centers in the 1960s, such as the International Rice Research Institute in Los Banos, the Philippines. These international agricultural research centers formally joined in 1971 as the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), under direction of the World Bank. The CGIAR proved fertile ground for the FAO’s goal of long-term germplasm conservation.

The FAO’s Panel of Experts approached the CGIAR in 1971 with the idea of integrating conservation of plant genetic resources into their existing agenda of international agricultural research. A meeting in 1972 between the CGIAR and FAO in Beltsville, Maryland, began talks about a global system for plant genetic conservation. The CGIAR relied on plant genetic resources for plant breeding, and already had some collections of germplasm. In 1974 the CGIAR and FAO formed the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources (IBPGR).

Under the direction of the FAO’s Pichel, the IBPGR, based in Rome, Italy, coordinated the collection, experimentation, and information dissemination of plant genetic conservation projects around the world. The IBPGR partnered with the CGIAR’s other international centers and national agricultural research centers to fund and create seed banks. These seed banks had multiple goals: long-term conservation, medium-term experimentation and propagation of germplasm for agricultural research, and short-term field experiments leading to new crop varieties.

In 1975, only eight seed banks existed in the world. This number would drastically increase under direction of the CGIAR and FAO, but not without controversy both within and outside of the IBPGR. The IBPRG changed leadership in 1979, when Trevor Williams replaced R. J. Pichel as executive secretary of the IBPGR. Publication of Pat Roy Mooney’s Seeds of the Earth: Private or Public Resource? sparked public controversy over access to seed banks.

Sources

Busch, Lawrence, William B. Lacy, Jeffrey Burkhardt, Douglas Hemken, Jubel Moraga-Rojel, Timothy Koponen, and Jose de Souza Silva. Making Nature Shaping Culture: Plant Biodiversity in Global Context. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.

CGIAR. 1971-1996 Database: 25 Years of Food and Agriculture Improvement in Developing Countries. http://www.worldbank.org/html/cgiar/25years/25cover.html (Accessed February 11, 2012).

Damania, Abi D. “History, Achievements, and Current Status of Genetic Resources Conservation.” Agronomy Journal 100 (2008): 9–21.

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.

Hawkes, Jack. “N. I. Vavilov—the man and his work.” Biological Journal of the Linnean Society 39 (1990): 3–6.

Hidalgo, Rigoberto, Benjamin Pineda, Daniel Debouck, and Mariano Mejia. “Module 1: Basic concepts of conservation for plant genetic resources” in Multi-Institutional Distance Learning Course on the Ex Situ Conservation of Plant Genetic Resources, eds. Benjamin Pineda and Rigoberto Hidalgo, 1–22. Cali, Columbia: Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), 2007. http://cropgenebank.sgrp.cgiar.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=317&Itemid=452&lang=english (Accessed February 25, 2012).

Kingsland, Sharon. “The Battling Botanist: Daniel Trembly MacDougal, Mutation Theory, and the Rise of Experimental Evolutionary Biology in America, 1900–1912.” Isis 82 (1991): 479–509.

Kloppenburg, Jack R., Jr. First the Seed: The Political Economy of Plant Biotechnology, 1492-2000 (2nd Ed.). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004.

Palladino, Paolo. “Wizards and devotees: on the Mendelian theory of inheritance and the professionalization of agricultural science in Great Britain and the United States, 1880–1930.” History of Science 32 (1994): 409–444.

Perkins, John H. Geopolitics and the Green Revolution: Wheat, Genes, and the Cold War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Pistorius, Robin. Scientists, Plants and Politics—A History of the Plant Genetic Resources Movement. Rome: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, 1997.

Pistorius, Robin and Jeroen van Wijk. The Exploitation of Plant Genetic Information: Political Strategies in Crop Development. New York: CABI Publishing, 1999.

Scarascia-Mugnozza, G.T. and P. Perrino. “The History of ex situ Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources.” In Managing Plant Genetic Diversity, eds. Johannes M.M. Engels, Ramanatha Rao, and Anthony Brown, 1–22. New York: CABI Publishing, 2001.

What is Golden Rice?

This semester I'm taking a class where I'm learning to write encyclopedia-style entries for ASU's Embryo Project. The Embryo Project focuses on anything related to embryos and embryo research, including the history of evolution, birth control, and stem cells. But since I don't really work on that stuff, they're letting me write about plants! My first article is on the history of Golden Rice, which I'll share a bit about here. My next three articles are on the history of seed banks and the movement for conservation of plant genetic resources. I'm including things like the history of plant patents and the biodiversity movement, which is part of why it's taking 3 articles.

So what is Golden Rice? Golden Rice is a technology that comes at the intersection of scientific and ethical debates that extend beyond a grain of rice. Golden Rice was the first crop variety engineered for micronutrient fortification with the intention of improving human health. Golden Rice has an engineered multi-gene biochemical pathway in its genome. This pathway produces beta-carotene, a molecule that becomes vitamin A when metabolized by humans. The inventors of Golden Rice were Ingo Potrykus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Peter Beyer of the University of Freiburg, Germany. The Rockefeller Foundation supported their collaboration. Scientists first succeeded in expressing beta-carotene in rice in 1999, and the results were published in 2000. Since then, Golden Rice has improved through laboratory and field trials, but as of 2012 is not commercially grown.

Golden Rice is named for its color, which is caused by beta-carotene. Normal rice, Oryza sativa, does not express beta-carotene in its endosperm—the starchy, biggest part of the rice seed, which is usually an off-white color. Beta-carotene is part of a class of molecules called carotenoids, one of hundreds that are naturally produced in plants, and it has a yellow-orange hue. Carotenoids are an essential human nutrient because they are precursors to molecules needed in metabolism. Beta-carotene (also known as pro-vitamin A) is transformed in the human body into vitamin A, necessary for production of retinal and retinoic acid. When populations lack access to foods containing beta-carotene­­—by eating mostly cereal crops such as rice, wheat, or sorghum—they are at risk of blindness and disease.

Rather than planning to commercialize their invention, the inventors, especially Potrykus, worked to legally secure Golden Rice as a humanitarian project. They licensed Golden Rice to Syngenta (formerly Zeneca), a Swiss biopharmaceutical company. Potrykus and Beyer soon established a “Golden Rice Humanitarian Board” to oversee the development of the technology and grant noncommercial licenses to public research institutes. These national and international research organizations would adapt Golden Rice to local environmental and climate conditions. The International Rice Research Institute gained a license for use from the Golden Rice project in 2001, aiming to spread Golden Rice throughout Asia.

Both inventors credit Syngenta’s Adrian Dubock with helping them navigate the complex intellectual property legal system around agricultural biotechnology. Neither Potrykus nor Beyer anticipated the Intellectual and Technology Property Rights and material transfer agreements required for production of Golden Rice. These licenses protect inventors’ rights to genetic material, scientific techniques, and exchange of seeds for research. A legal assessment of Golden Rice in 2000 showed that it contained over seventy patents, but patents vary country to country. Many of the patents do not apply to the developing countries at which Golden Rice was targeted. For the licenses that were required, these were obtained over a few months at minimal cost.

Critics of Golden Rice include the environmental group Greenpeace. Greenpeace has staged public protests against Golden Rice, and is systematically opposed to all genetically modified organisms. Greenpeace claimed that the amount of beta-carotene in Golden Rice is so small, that one would need to consume massive quantities of rice to reach an effective dose. While it can be difficult to measure the ingestion of vitamins, a team of scientists from Syngenta introduced “Golden Rice 2” in 2005, which produced increased levels of beta-carotene by substituting the original daffodil genes with similar genes from corn.

As of early 2012, Golden Rice was still in field trials. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), partnered with Hellen Keller International, plans to introduce Golden Rice in Bangladesh and the Philippines by crossing it with local, high-yielding rice varieties. While IRRI has been involved in the Golden Rice project since nearly its invention, Hellen Keller International joined the project to support the public health benefits of vitamin A. The Golden Rice project at IRRI is supported by Rockefeller Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation became a supporter of the Golden Rice project in 2011. Bangladesh approved field trials of Golden Rice, and as of 2012 estimates that varieties will be available for consumption by 2015.

More to come... but this is for some background, and I hope you found it interesting! My sources are available upon request.

Links I liked, plus some musings on modernization

It's been a busy, stressful week for me. the good news is I've begun contacting potential research hosts in India. The bad news is my last fellowship essay is due on Tuesday. I've applied for three large fellowships this year, and I'm hoping at least one of them will come through. 

But you don't need me to get your fill of science policy news, right? Here's my round-up of links I liked this week.

• My new (to me) favorite blog: New Security Beat. All about environmental change and national security. Check out some of their latest posts about climate change and security.
• The New York Times has been running a series of articles on the dark side of Apple's manufacturing plants in China. For more on Apple and global markets, check out these posts by Pielke and Bellemare.
• XKCD tackles the sustainability of "sustainable."
• The Biology Files on "The science public information officer: it's complicated."
• Kate Clancy on "Blogging while female." Online harassment is, fortunately, something I haven't had to deal with on my blog, but Clancy's blogs and others in the female-scientist-blogosphere always keep me on my toes about gender and science issues.

The latest "Food for 9 Billion" radio program by Marketplace features the Philippines, and the transcript is worth a read. There's also a cool interactive graph and timeline to play with. Of course, my favorite part was the interview with Robert Zeigler, director of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), who begins by talking about IRRI's role in the Green Revolution.

Robert Zeigler: I think in many ways we're facing challenges that dwarf what we were facing in the 1960s. 

[narrator] That's Robert Zeigler, director of the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. This is where those high-yielding rice strains were first developed. Zeigler says with climate change and an increasingly crowded planet, the huge increases of the past may be harder to come by this time around. 

Zeigler: I don't think there's any question that we will want to feed these people and we want them to be well fed and we want them to be well nourished and we want them to be healthy. At the same time, we have to do this in a way that once populations do stabilize that the world we live in is a place we want to live in. 

[narrator] And this is where things get tricky. Zeigler says the demand for rice is expected to grow anywhere from 50-70 percent in the coming years. Meeting that demand without jeopardizing the planet's remaining ecosystems will take a level of coordination and foresight unprecedented in human history. For him, the technological Holy Grail is a bioengineered, photosynthesis-supercharged, rice strain. But such a breakthrough is decades away, if at all. And in the meantime the Philippines, and much of the world, is losing productive farmland, not adding it.

Something I'm really interested in for my own research is how the narrative of the Green Revolution and technological breakthroughs is used to talk about climate change. It is a fairly obvious strategy for agricultural research organizations, despite critiques of the Green Revolution. The sense of urgency due to climate change recapitulates what historian Nick Cullather refers to as IRRI's “Manhattan Project for Food” [source].

Speaking of Nick Cullather, I've become quite interested in modernization theory and Cold War geopolitics lately. So my nerd alert went off when I came across this roundtable discussion of Michael Latham's
The Right Kind of Revolution: Modernization, Development, and U.S. Foreign Policy from the Cold War to the Present. I will definitely have to check the book out.

Here is a particularly interesting excerpt from Corrina Unger's review of the book:

Development often served as an ideology, too, and ideas about development, especially about colonial development were often based on scientific discourses, theories, and concepts.3 There seems to be agreement that modernization was a scientized version of older development ideas, but Latham’s study does not fully explain which difference which kind of science made. Also, it would be worthwhile to inquire into whether we can identify a specifically American type of science behind modernization or if and how transnational and global experiences and encounters transformed its character. [see footnote below] 

Linked to this problem is the question of definitions, which, for an opaque term like modernization, is of course very difficult. Although Latham does not offer a precise definition, he does identify elements he considers characteristic of modernization: In his view, “the promise of acceleration” and the “perceived potential to link the promotion of development with the achievement of security” were what made American policymakers so enthusiastic about modernization. (3) This is in line with his thesis about the United States’ support of the “right kind of revolution”, a science-based revolution geared toward securing American global interests. Latham excels at contextualizing modernization and its many facets, thereby providing much more than a narrow history of modernization. His engaging account is of interest to anyone concerned with American intellectual, political, and international history.  

[footnote] For recent findings on the scientization of politics after 1945, see the contributions in Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 50 (2010). Also see Sheila Jasanoff, ed., States of Knowledge: The co-production of science and social order (London, New York: Routledge, 2004). On the United States’ transnational ties and its “looping effects”, see Ian Tyrell, Transnational Nation: United States History in Global Perspective since 1789 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).  

Science in the 20th Century: An abbreviated tour

This week for a class we read several chapters from the book, Science in the Twentieth Century, edited by John Krige and Dominique Pestre. The 20th Century is, of course, my favorite century because of the developments in technology and agriculture. World War I and II are significant milestones for innovation in the 20th Century, as many of the authors noted. And much of the science policy that we operate by today is driven by our conceptions of innovation from the post-war era, and the famous science policy manifesto, Science, the Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush.

Chapter 6 by Theordore Porter, “The Management of Society by Numbers,” dealt with the emergence of accounting and managerial science. Porter asserts that concepts such as statistics and cost-benefit analysis didn’t just emerge as a tool of capitalism, but rather the tools themselves co-evolved with ways to shape political order. Writing about nation-based economic planning, accounting, and growth, Porter writes, “Clearly such statistics have to do with regulating social and economic life, not merely with describing it” (p. 101). Turning often-nebulous concepts such as “cause of death,” race, and cost-benefit analyses into concrete numbers and statistics is a classic project of the Enlightenment, but Ported shows how exactly these tools had an impact on society. The extreme case of imposing technological order on society is demonstrated by eugenics, which Daniel Kevles explores in Chapter 16. Eugenics was the promotion of “good breeding” and sometimes coerced sterilization, but was eventually shunned after its central role in Nazi science. But IQ tests, initially developed to test soldiers in WWI for their leadership capacity, clearly played and continue to play a role in how we categorize and govern out citizens, and especially how we educate them.

What I found most profound about Porter’s chapter was how the rationalization of government projects and citizens is at once technocratic, but also transparent. Anyone with a bit of training can challenge scientific or economic results, imposing their own values on the intepretation. Porter writes, “such tools are not unambiguously friendly to elite experts. Expertise means not simply the ability to apply difficult technical methods, but also, or mainly, the capacity to exercise judgment with wisdom and discrimination” (106). To me, this is where the system breaks down. There is an expectation that scientists should be politically uninvolved and devoid of values. From the scientists’ perspective this is the “loading dock” model: you do your research, then drop it off at the dock and just hope someone picks it up and uses it. The problem, as we see with climate change, is that anyone can contest the results. We shouldn’t ask scientists to be advocates, but there should be more “Honest Brokering” of science and how we can use it as a tool for democracy, rather than stalemating policy.

I also enjoyed Chapter 12 by W. Bernard Calson, titled “Innovation and the Modern Corporation.” Carlson traces some of the major inventors and innovators back into the 1800s, showing the differences between the lone-inventor of Thomas Edison to today’s research laboratory style of corporate innovation. The most interesting thing was the co-evolution of technologies and organizational structure in major firms like GE and Bell Laboratories. There is a delicate balance between letting inventors and scientists have enough creative mobility, but also channeling their work into a commercial product. This is one of the key tensions of science policy, and the supposed divide between “basic” and “applied” research. In Deborah Fitzgerald’s chapter on the history of agricultural science, she reveals similar themes. During the 20th Century, agricultural science went from not being a science at all (farmers didn’t use scientific management or breeding), to an informal network of public and private scientists in the 1920s, to now the highly technological system of agriculture and the dominance of private corporations. The organizational structure of agricultural science, as in most technological industries, is both dependent on and determining of the type of technologies that emerge from these enterprises.

Defining my research question Part II

My big project of this semester is writing my prospectus, which is a full-length research proposal that I will later present and defend in front of my committee. I'm also working on my NSF GRFP proposal, which I got an honorable mention for last year and am really working on right now. So I'm working on the "big picture" prospectus, and then cramming it all into a 2-page (with detailed methodology, of course) research proposal for the NSF. Today I gave a presentation about my research, and was highly encouraged to look not only at public research organizations, but private as well. They looked at my figure (above) and asked the glaring question: where would a company like Monsanto be? I think we're onto something, so here goes...

Question 
How do crop varieties that are developed for short-term weather variability become promoted as a long-term climate adaptation strategy? What is the role of, and interaction between, international public and private research organizations in developing and promoting these varieties?

Motivating context
My research question revolves specifically around technological innovations in plant genetics, which are often promoted as a solution to climate change adaptation in agriculture. Drought-resistant, flood-tolerant, salt-tolerant, and heat-tolerant varieties can improve plant responses to weather variability, which is expected to increase under climate change. My research will examine how climate change is addressed in plant genetic research in the agricultural innovation system, and some of the farm-level implications of these technologies.

‘Agricultural innovation systems’ are typically viewed as the research pipeline from public international, to national, to local research and extension systems. The international research centers provide a centralized hub of knowledge production and, critically, innovations in plant genetics. Plant genetic improvement—such as “modern” (high-yielding) crop varieties, hybrids, and transgenics—has guided agricultural innovation systems over the past century. This concept has captured the imagination of scientists, policy-makers, and the public alike since the Green Revolution.

However, today’s agricultural innovation system is much more complex than the linear research pipeline. Farmers now participate in plant breeding research, and non-governmental organizations and private seed companies work in parallel with the public, Green Revolution-style research and extension infrastructure. Notably, the introduction of patents and intellectual property rights on genes and plant varieties frustrates the public-good-oriented public agricultural research, while providing an economic incentive for private agricultural research. The result is not a bifurcation of research goals, but rather a collaboration of public, private, and other agricultural organizations woven together in a “triple-helix” model of innovation, rather than the linear model. For example, this article shows the interactions between public and private research and funding:

Monsanto and BASF, for instance, are working with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and national agricultural research programs in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and South Africa to develop drought-tolerant corn. The program is supported by a $47 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In March this year, the African Agricultural Technology Foundation announced that Monsanto and BASF have agreed to donate royalty-free drought-tolerant transgenes to the African researchers.

Innovation theory
The Hayami-Ruttan “Induced Innovation Hypothesis” seeks to explain how “supply” and “demand” factors influence the development of new agriculturally technologies. On the “supply” side is scientific agricultural research. On the “demand” side is farmers’ willingness to adopt new innovations. “Climate,” and other environmental forces, also affects the “demands” of agriculture, imposing new conditions that limit or provide opportunities for innovations. Can Hayami-Ruttan’s hypothesis provide insight into where we expect innovations to happen in the research pipeline, in light of the new organizational and institutional arrangements?

So what?
We imagine futures based on current technologies and past trajectories, thus certain innovations get “locked-in” and others “locked-out” of research and development. While climate is a relevant variable in the future of agriculture, it is not the only variable, especially in light of farmer livelihoods and the complexities of climate change adaptation and the overall resilience of agro-ecological systems. How does climate change influence farmers’ adoption of new crops, and facilitate or hamper longer-term climate adaptation strategies?


Further reading:
Parayil, G. (2003). Mapping technological trajectories of the Green Revolution and the Gene Revolution from modernization to globalization. Research Policy, 32, 971-990.

Seeds and sociotechnical imaginaries

Image source.

One of the coolest things about Science & Technology Studies is that it blurs the line between the social sciences and humanities. Scholars from the disciplines of anthropology, history, sociology, women's studies, and political science (among others) all collaborate to understand the world from this unique lens. The benefit I enjoy from this perspective is that I can take a more creative, literary approach to some of my research. For example, just today I was thinking about this post, and something about these pictures reminded me of none other than the Jack and the Beanstalk fairy tale! Stick with me, and I'll actually try to make a convincing argument for the connection to climate change.

Image source.

Image source.

I've been thinking about how we use the "imagination" of plant DNA, genetics, breeding, biotechnology, as a future technology to help crops adapt to climate change. For example, if you take the DNA from a warmer climate plant and breed it (either through conventional crossing, or biotechnology/recombinant DNA methods) with another plant with desired characteristics, farmers can then grow that plant without having to radically change their methods or machinery. I am developing a fair amount of criticism of this imagination because of two main things:

1) Agricultural technologies and practices have radically changed over the past 50 years, and will continue to do so (thus projecting a predicable, stable yield output is somewhat futile).
2) We cannot ignore the social and economic context of global agriculture and the scope of challenges that farmers face every day (reducing the complexity of climate change adaptation).

There are also questions of what are we adapting, what are we sustaining, and who will benefit/lose out? Many people attempt to address the first two questions with science; however, they are fundamentally based on human values.

STS provides some useful tools for dealing with scientific imaginations of the future: Sheila Jasanoff calls these "sociotechnical imaginaries," which, similar to the co-production of science and society, are visions of the future that embed and prescribe certain social assumptions. Jasanoff and Kim (2009) use the example of how the United States and North Korea had very different visions of how nuclear power should be used. One technology, but two different interpretations. This goes to show another theme of STS, which is how within "sociotechnical systems," you cannot always separate technologies from their social context. The two are deeply intertwined. This also means that there are no socially-neutral technologies- they will always benefit some, harm some, and have unforeseen consequences.

So imaginaries tend to reduce the complexity of global issues, and also obscure the social implications with scientific certainties. This is very problematic, and I wonder how the continued imagination of plant genetics as a savior will hold up under climate change. Until next time, read this.

Global science policy for innovation and adaptation in agriculture

Image source.

All summer I've been working on a paper, long overdue, for my Innovation Studies class. My main focus is how technological innovation in agriculture promotes or constrains adaptive capacity to climate change. Here is a review and my response to some recent global reports. (If you're wondering why I choose Google's Mendel-themed logo today, scroll to the bottom!)

Due to the importance of agriculture to international development efforts, international consortiums such as the World Bank have examined the prospects for future agricultural research and innovation, increasingly in the context of climate change adaptation. Especially in Africa, agriculture-based technology transfer has been a main focus of organizations like the United Nations Development Programme’s Climate Change Adaptation Team (Tessa & Kurukulasuriya, 2010). The "technology transfer" model has been upheld since the Green Revolution, but agricultural development paradigms are beginning to shift towards an "innovation systems" approach (McIntyre et al., 2009).

The international development literature also examines the synergies between agricultural innovation and adaptive capacity. A World Bank report on agricultural innovation addresses adaptive capacity, though not specifically with regards to climate change, stating that:

Using technical assistance... does not build capacity to innovate unless it is linked to specific efforts to learn from these experiences and develop networks that can both anticipate changes and bring in the expertise to deal with them as needed. In other words, firefighting approaches result in ad hoc responses but not in a sustainable capacity to respond…. Sectors or organizations require an adaptive capacity, whereby they are plugged into sources of information about the changing environment. The other facet of adaptive capacity is that it requires links to the sources of knowledge and expertise needed to tackle a varied and unpredictable set of innovation tasks. (World Bank, 2006, p. 70)

Based on a 2009 World Bank report on the same topic, innovative capacity and adaptive capacity are used somewhat interchangeably (again, not necessarily in the context of climate change, but rather broader economic, social, and environmental change) (Rajalahti, Janssen, & Pehu, 2009). However, as opposed to the emerging innovation systems approach of major development organizations, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), part of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and also under the World Bank umbrella, tends to take a more reductionist approach to science and technology innovation. They often make broad claims such as, “Even without climate change, greater investments in agricultural science and technology are needed to meet the demands of a world population expected to reach 9 billion by 2050… Agricultural science- and technology-based solutions are essential to meet those demands,” based on global models and metrics of yield and calories (Nelson et al., 2010, p. viii).

The CGIAR recently launched a “Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security” (CCAFS) program area that brings together global experts on climate change and agriculture. The CCFAS, like many mainstream international development agencies, takes a vulnerability approach to climate change and rural livelihoods. Despite some focus on reconciling the supply and demand of science (for example, through boundary work), linear models such as “Feeding climate information into climate-limited livelihood systems holds a great deal of promise” often prevail (CGIAR, 2009, p. 19). In the case of the CGIAR, there are constraints on both the supply and demand side of innovation in international agricultural research systems. The CGIAR has a history of investing in plant genetic research, so there is a bias towards plant breeding and biotechnology that can result in narrow research objectives (Dalrymple, 2006). On the demand side, adoption of technological innovations is constrained by farmers’ perspectives, which are often highly local and limited by time-scale (Dalrymple, 2006). Lybbert and Sumner (2010) explicitly address the opportunities and constraints for technological innovation and adoption of climate-relevant technologies (for both mitigation and adaptation) in developing countries. They point out government interventions that can have a significant impact on technological developments and farmers’ adaptive capacity, such as intellectual property rights and research and development priorities.

A report titled “The top 100 questions of importance to the future of global agriculture” identifies climate change impacts as one of the most pressing concerns of global agriculture (Pretty et al., 2010). The authors frame climate change adaptation in the context of tradeoffs in the ‘food, energy and environment trilemma’ (Tilman et al., 2009), and ask questions such as, “How can the resilience of agricultural systems be improved to both gradual climate change and increased climatic variability and extremes?” (Pretty et al., 2010, p. 225). Questions 59-72 deal explicitly with increasing farmers’ innovativeness and adaptive capacity through models of agricultural extension, participatory research, gender-equity at all levels of research and extension efforts, and improving overall rural livelihoods (Pretty et al., 2010).

The International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development Global Report is another recent and comprehensive article on the state of global agriculture and science and technology policy. On the topic of climate change, it states that, “Agricultural households and enterprises need to adapt to climate change but they do not yet have the experience in and knowledge of handling these processes, including increased pressure due to biofuel production” (McIntyre et al., 2009, p. 3). The authors propose to increase the reach of extension education and access to natural and financial capital as ways to promote farmer adoption of technologies, as well as exploiting synergies between knowledge and technological innovation. In terms of climate change adaptation, the authors lay out two pathways: high technology (crop, soil, and climate modeling, plant genetic improvement) and low technology (irrigation, farm management practices). It is worth noting that the high technology approach of biotechnology and climate models are “supply heavy” and rely significantly on future technological breakthroughs, whereas the low technology approaches are “win-win” adaptations for smallholder farmers that both improve yields and increase adaptive capacity. 

However, one of the climate take-home messages of agricultural innovation scholars is that future technological innovation and global market trends are likely to be more important than the negative impacts of climate change. The predicted gradual climatic shifts will allow institutional innovation to occur in agricultural research, especially in light of the United States’ history of making cheap food a priority through market structures (such as subsidies and disaster insurance) and investment in technology. Bill Easterling (1996) predicts that farmers may face some climate related losses, an increase in global demand (thus the need for higher yields or more cropland), and overall increased constraints on farm finances. Technological innovations such as land management techniques, crop genetic diversity, and rapid response to inputs such as energy prices will be more important.

In my paper I examined how different agricultural technologies- from plant breeding and varieties, to irrigation, to climate forecasts- can present opportunities and constraints for adaptation. Something that's been on my mind lately is the utilization of plant genetic resources (hence the Gregor Mendel logo!) for climate adaptation in agriculture. More on that soon!

Agricultural innovation: the threat of global climate change

Image source: Josh Haner/New York Times

A front-page feature of the New York Times this weekend is all about global food and the predicted impacts of climate change. The need for innovation in a warming, higher-CO2 planet was one of the key themes. The take-home message was that the impacts of climate change will be worse for agriculture than previously predicted. Extreme weather events, such as floods, droughts and increased weather variability are potential "deal breakers" for entire crops. The more gradual aspects of climate change, such as average temperature increase and sea level rise, may be more manageable, but disasters exacerbate crop losses through a convergence of environmental and economic factors.

So what do disasters have to do with innovation? According to the New York Times and many others, we need to innovate crops that can withstand these weather extremes. The article states,

Leading researchers say it is possible to create crop varieties that are more resistant to drought and flooding and that respond especially well to rising carbon dioxide. The scientists are less certain that crops can be made to withstand withering heat, though genetic engineering may eventually do the trick.

A lot of the narrative about how agriculture can respond to a changing climate relies on this scientific concept: using plant breeding and biotechnology for better, more resilient crops. Plant breeding, or selecting crops based on the positive traits of the parent generations, led to some of the fundamental advances in crop science during the past century. Check out this graphic for a synopsis of the gains made in food production during the Green Revolution (coincidentally, produced by a colleague of mine at ASU). In fact, during the "Green Revolution" that started in the 1940s and continued to very recently, some plant breeders were international celebrities, especially in the science policy and international development circles. However, other economic and political factors pushed for more fertilizer, mechanized labor, and irrigation. Without these "packages" of technologies, the better seeds alone would not have done much.

So what are some fundmental lessons we can learn from innovation during the Green Revolution to apply to innovation in a post-normal climate?

1) Agricultural innovations are shaped by a variety of factors, not just "fundamental breakthroughs." These include private industry, public agricultural research, economic, and political factors. Two famous Green Revolution agricultural economists, Hayami and Ruttan, studied the agricultural history of the U.S. and Japan and created a theory called the "induced innovation hypothesis." This hypothesis explains how technological change is based on economic factors of supply and demand, rather than spontaneous discoveries (Ruttan, 2006a). For example, Hayami and Ruttan demonstrated how agricultural technologies in Japan were based on a “biological” innovation track, while the United States was more focused on “mechanical” innovations (Ruttan, 2006a). Factors such as availability of land and cost of inputs (fertilizer, labor, and mechanical power) influenced the technological trajectory of each country (Ruttan, 2006a). Institutional factors (policy, research systems, and other social rules and organizations) also play a role in innovation, and these institutions respond to supply and demand forces to innovate themselves (Ruttan & Hayami, 1984; Ruttan, 2006b).

2) Supply and demand factors will likely influence how different agricultural innovation systems respond to climate change. However, unlike most agricultural inputs, “climate is not priced, so it is difficult to provide clear examples of climatic inducements to agricultural research based on price signals” (Easterling, 1996, p. 19). Although climate does not have a market price, prevailing policies seek to reduce greenhouse emissions. Therefore climate mitigation will require farmers to adapt to these economic limits as well as a changing climate (Smith & Olesen, 2010).

3) Let's not view plant breeding and biotechnology as a panacea to climate change. There are many other factors in global agriculture that are not related to climate change. Improved plant varieties can be difficult to translate into direct benefits, especially in developing countries, because farmers must use new management techniques and buy into the higher-input system. This is why extension education is critical for agricultural development, in all parts of the world. In parts of sub-Saharan Africa, farmers would just benefit from using more fertilizer, which is the main barrier to higher crop yields (Vitousek et al., 2009). However, fertilizer prices are exorbitantly high (Otsuka & Kijima, 2010). Thus, technology is not the easy answer that we wish it were. Otsuka and Kijima write that, "we should not overlook the fact that rice yield increased by roughly 50% and non-rice yield increased by nearly 100% in SSA over the last three decades since around 1970 despite the absence of major technological breakthroughs" (Otsuka & Kijima, 2010, p. ii66). Even in the Green Revolution, it was not a straightforward path from science to technology to application.

Sources:

Easterling, W.E. (1996). Adapting North American agriculture to climate change in review. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, 80, l-53.

Gillis, J. (4 June 2011). "A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself." New York Times.

Otsuka, K. & Kijima, Y. (2010). Technology Policies for a Green Revolution and Agricultural Transformation in Africa. JOURNAL OF AFRICAN ECONOMIES, VOLUME 19, AERC SUPPLEMENT 2, p. ii60–ii76 doi:10.1093/jae/ejp025

Ruttan, V.W. (2006a). Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ruttan, V.W. (2006b). Social science knowledge and induced institutional innovation: an institutional design perspective. Journal of Institutional Economics, 2(3), 249-272.

Ruttan, V.W. and Hayami, Y. (1984). Toward a theory of induced institutional innovation. Journal of Development Studies, 20(4), 203-223.

Smith, P. & Olesen, J.E. (2010). Synergies between the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change in agriculture. Journal of Agricultural Science, 148, 543-552.

Vitousek, P.M. et al. (2009). Nutrient imbalances in agricultural development. Science 324, 1519-1520.

The importance of innovation: stories of sugar beets and soybeans

Sugar beets: not the prettiest sight. Image source.

In my last post I highlighted the "myth" of the linear model of science policy, and how this impedes progress in energy policy and ultimately making climate models applicable to local settings (i.e. science for decision-making). An alternative to the linear model is a more nuanced view of innovation. The "innovation approach" is a possible solution to the policy gridlock over climate change and energy. Innovation has been historically important to economic growth in the U.S., and is a more politically palatable solution (investing in clean energy technologies) than setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions. The Breakthrough Institute has some great scholarship on this topic, so check out them and their blog.

So how does innovation actually work? I've already implied that it doesn't follow the linear model of basic to applied research. Interestingly, on Tuesday I had the pleasure of attending a U.S. Senate Agricultural Committee Field hearing at MSU's campus. Many of the speakers called for renewed investment in "basic research," especially at the university. There is certainly a place for basic research at universities, because they often take on more risky research projects than the private sector. For example, I learned that MSU is the only place that researches sugar beet genetics. Sugar beets are an economically important crop to Michigan farmers, and MSU research, coupled with outreach by MSU Extension, is an important asset for improving the productivity of sugar beets.

As you can see from this video (here's the related article), private and public partnerships can yield "sweet success" for farmers. Involving end-users, such as farmers, can improve the social outcomes of scientific research through what Dan Sarewitz and Roger Pielke, Jr. call "reconciling the supply and demand of science." Download their article, which overviews many of the issues I've discussed on this blog, here.

Innovations aren't just serendipitous discoveries in the lab. They are often discovered and shaped by user-needs and preferences, by available technology, and market prices (such as energy, raw materials, market demand, and financing options). Scholars are now investigating the role of climate in inducing technological innovations in agriculture. One of the best examples of this is a study published in 2001 by John Smithers and Alison Blay-Palmer (download here).

These authors aim to open the "black box" of climate-induced technological innovation in the Canadian soybean industry. They link several innovations in soybeans to climate-related factors since the 1970s. Improvements in technology helped farmers manage the risk of normal climate variation (not necessarily related to climate change) and of adapting soybeans to new climates while the growing region expanded. One of the most important innovations in soybeans is the development improved crop varieties from plant breeding, for example, cold-tolerant crops.

Contrary to much of the technological optimism in agriculture towards climate change, the authors list some biological and economic constraints to future climate-induced innovations, specifically the limits of biotechnology and plant breeding. Plant breeding for new crops takes several years, and it can be difficult to predict future local climate conditions. They also list the narrow focus on crop yields as a possible constraint to innovation, as new varieties of crops for future climates may not have higher yields, but rather will help farmers adapt to new conditions. This is why it's important to involve farmers in the research decision process; because it is ultimately up to them whether to adopt a new crop.

The authors also discuss the prospects of public and private research (and the need for alliances), patents and intellectual property rights, and changing markets. In the past, public-private research partnerships had lower transaction costs, but these have risen because of gene patents that are often held by private companies. Addressing these barriers is crucial to future agricultural innovations for a changing climate.

They conclude with the provocative question, “Which adaptations seem likely given the current scientific limits and institutional constraints on innovation, and the competing influence of various other innovation needs in agriculture and society?” (Smithers & Blay-Palmer, 2001, p. 193). Climate change adaptation in agriculture is embedded in a complex social, political, economic, and technological system in which researchers, extension educators, and farmers must make decisions.

Source: Smithers, John and Alison Blay-Palmer. Technology innovation as a strategy for climate adaptation in agriculture. Applied Geography 21 (2001): 175–197.