Abstract
Few contemporary issues in global agriculture are as passionately debated as the status of the world's genetic resources of the major food crops and few scholars comprehend this topic as thoroughly as Stephen Brush. Over the span of a few decades, crop diversity has moved from the narrow concern of a handful of plant scientists and breeders to the center of a politically charged and scientifically complex debate. Engaging in this debate are biological and social scientists, legal scholars, private sector entrepreneurs, and representatives of diverse political bodies ranging from indigenous communities to international agencies. Even as stakeholder contingencies of North-South, private-public, and “gene rich-gene poor” regions vehemently disagree on assumptions and “facts,” they all concur that unless something is done quickly and profoundly all of humanity will face a future global food system dangerously dependent on a narrow and vulnerable genetic base. What puts Stephen Brush in a key position to help us all understand the subtleties of this increasingly complex topic is his long-term systematic bird-dogging of this theme in key cradles of crop diversity. His insights are not based on merely reading “texts” and attending politically charged meetings where the issues are debated and often misunderstood, but on rigorous and in-depth work in the fields, kitchens, store houses, and markets of the developing world.
Farmers’ Bounty is Brush's bold synthesis of what he has learned from farmers, scientists, and politicians about crop diversity over the past three decades. Brush is the first anthropologist to join a small group of plant science greats, such as Nicolai Vavilov and Jack Harlan, to study three major crops—potatoes, maize, and wheat—in their centers of origin and diversity. To this rich portrait, he adds voluminous data and insights on other crops and world areas to give us the best overview of the field of plant genetic resources (PGRs) published to date. The book is ambitiously organized around four themes: “to explain the patterns of crop diversity; to ponder the fate of that diversity; to imagine new means of conserving it; and to address equity issues” (p. xv). To address the “why” of crop diversity (and increasingly “why not?”) in different regions and among key crops, Brush draws not only from his own anthropological background in cultural and human ecology, but from theoretical ecology. Despite the power of ecological models such as niche theory and metapopulation analysis for explaining genetic erosion in peasant systems, he is quick to point out that they were not conceived to handle the role of humans as manipulators and designers of diverse crops and cropping systems. The daunting challenge, he concludes—but does not resolve—is to “re-work theory and methods from both ecology and social science for studying crop populations” (p. 193).
Regarding conserving crop diversity in gene banks and in farmers’ fields, Brush again has a long-term personal viewpoint. His field research during the late 1970s overlapped with my own service as a staff anthropologist at the International Potato Center (CIP) of the Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research (CGIAR), which has a global mandate to conserve crop diversity in gene banks. The 1970s and 1980s were a time when plant scientists exerted strong institutional resistance to any role for farm communities in agricultural research (Rhoades 2005). Three decades later, however, in situ conservation has become a development bandwagon for NGOs and national and international agencies. Other than the words “service and political reasons,” Brush does not attempt to explain the recent change of heart in the CGIAR or the social and economic costs of decades of intellectual conservatism during which the march of the Green Revolution helped speed the demise of traditional varieties and wild species. Although not discussed by Brush, one reason for finally recognizing farmers in agricultural research came from a strong in-house social science presence in the CGIAR throughout the 1980s. Unfortunately, the anthropological and ethnobiological perspective has diminished in recent years due to budget cuts and retrenchment (Thiele et al. 2001). One can only ponder, therefore, if the new CGIAR programs of “scientific approaches for in situ conservation” are merely “old wine in new bottles.” Brush does not challenge these initiatives; in fact, he defines in situ conservation in programmatic terms instead of something that farmers, gardeners, and seed savers all over the world do largely on their own in their own time and space without intervention or support from outside groups. Most likely, saving the world's crop diversity will come from local people's own initiatives rather than ad hoc seed fairs, subsidies, prizes, or seed banks organized by outsiders. PGR scientists, rather than institutionalizing the in situ process, can still learn how to fit in with what is already going on in the everyday life of farmers and gardeners, but this requires humility and a new language of conservation (Nazarea 2005).
As to equity and ownership of PGRs, Brush correctly points to polarization and a breakdown of communication. When Brush started his research in the mid-1970s, the answers were relatively simple for those who knew enough to think about intellectual property. Except in a few isolated cases, PGRs were assumed to be the common heritage of humankind. They belonged to the public domain presumably outside ownership or control by any special interest group. The road from free, open access to crop diversity in Third World Vavilov centers by “gene-poor” nations and special interests to the present-day deadlock of no access is one strewn with greed and shortsightedness, especially from northern vested interests. Although NGO activists are seen as busting the free-for-all party, farmers in “gene-rich” regions on their own are coming to understand the hypocrisy of foreign patents, plant breeders’ rights, varietal protection, and a host of other mechanisms that declare “what is mine is mine but what is yours is also mine.” Brush points to the Convention on Biodiversity and legal wrangling at international and bilateral levels as culprits in the decline of open, free exchange of germplasm. Through cries of “biopiracy” and counterreaction from those countries now “gene bank-rich,” little trust is today found in the international exchange (increasingly “non-exchange”) system. Unfortunately, some of the statements from Brush's book, although unintended by him, are already being used as ammunition in the ongoing intellectual and legal firefight. At least two biotech websites quote Brush's warning that while “fears of biopiracy have led many tropical countries to restrict access to their genetic resources, it is often the poorer countries that benefit most from the free exchange of crop biodiversity.” The detailed historical context provided by Brush on how the gene-poor became gene-rich through plant exploration, collection, and intellectual property regimes have been conveniently excluded.
Despite these caveats, this book represents a defining statement about agrobiodiversity from a scholar who has spent decades looking into every angle of this complex and changing topic. Farmers’ Bounty signals to the world that the interdisciplinary study of PGR has become a respected field in its own right. Scientists, students, activists, capitalists, bureaucrats, and even farm communities themselves are focusing with great interest and intensity on crop diversity in the contemporary world. Brush is to be lauded as a pioneer in a dynamic and explosive field of inquiry which, in the end, has nothing less than the survival of humankind as its ultimate goal.