HT my good pal Aaron Leaf.

Reuters reports that a new study by Oxfam warns that farmers in developing countries are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.  Seasonal weather patterns have shifted, resulting in drought in villages like Nassapir, Uganda.

“We don’t know why the god is no longer answering our requests,” said Laurien Lokwareng, an elder of the Jie ethnic group. “For years, we used to ask the god for rain and we got it in abundance, but we have had four years without enough rain now, and this is very strange.”

The report surveys a cross section of farmers in 15 countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, who allege that shifting climatic patterns are producing shorter growing seasons and crop failure. The agency predicts that the maize harvest in Sub-Sahara Africa could drop 15 percent by 2020, enough to leave a lot of people hungry.

I haven’t had an opportunity to read the full report yet, but my interest is peaked by the methodology. The information used to support the claims is a combination of data from the scientific community with traditional knowledge from the civilians who are living in the wake of our changing climate.  As I’ve mention previously on this blog, academics have been swift to reject studies that fail to prove a causal relationship between climate data and human impacts.  It will be interesting to see over the next few days how this report in received.

The growing trend of converting agriculture lands to agrifuel lands is very real in the world’s poorest nations.  While in Lusaka last year I attended a colloquium where Jatropha was hailed as the miracle crop that would carry Zambia through an economic slump in the global price of copper.  At the time, Zambia’s petro prices had skyrocket above two dollars a liter, the most expensive in the region.  (The irony of course being that the nation shares a boarder with Angola.)  The benefits of petro-independence for the landlocked nation were awfully appealing.

A small but growing biofuel lobby was pressuring government officials to create strong incentives for farmers to convert their fields to fuel growing powerhouses.  Alas, the number’s simply didn’t add up.  Jatropha is tricky to grow. It’s productivity is variable, it’s yields unpredictable  Without subsidies the costs of production would exceed potential returns, meaning production of Jatropha would rely heavily on foreign aid dollars.  Dollars that could be spent on fertilizer for food-growing fields, or even food itself. (Never mind the fact that the general scientific consensus is that biofuel production is counter-productive due to it’s high demand on water and petro to grow crops.)

In a nation where many go hungry and the majority live on less than $1 a day, growing fuel instead of food simply doesn’t make sense.

But when we went around the table to debate whether or not individuals would change their habits after reading the book, the answer was a resounding no. I suppose not entirely surprising, but perhaps a tad soul crushing? I spend my entire day trying to give people the tools and information they need to make the behavioral modifications necessary to alter the crash-course direction our planet is heading in. I’ve always believed that with knowledge comes the ability to change, or at least the ability to make a choice. Perhaps there-in lies the problem – people are lazy, and don’t want to make the more difficult choice. Ah evolution, you fail me again.

Speaking of evolution (and the coming apocalypse) the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is in the news again. For those of you who haven’t heard of the project, it’s essentially a bomb-proof concrete bunker, encased in permafrost and stored way up in the Norwegian Arctic. It’s the Noah’s Ark of seed banks, designed to save us from our untimely Doomsday demise.

Apparently, our Doomsday is closer than we think. Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and intellectual father of the Svalbard Seed Vault, recently had this to say:

“By the end of the century, average temperatures during growing seasons in many regions will probably be higher than the very hottest temperatures now. By 2030, we could see a 30 percent drop in maize production in Southern Africa; 2030 is only two crop generations away. We’re not talking about some time in the distant future when we all expect to be dead. We certainly can’t wake up in 2029 and decide to do something.”

Of course, saving seeds these days is easier said than done. Intellectual property rights have crept into all facets of post-industrial life, including mother nature’s own designs. The 2001 UN treaty of Plant Genetic Resources (ITPGR) officially resolved that farmers, breeder and scientists should have open access to the plant genetic resources of 64 species of the world’s major food crops, so long as they agree to return an equitable share of profit from any marketed product they derive.

Equitable share? Marketable products? I thought we were talking about food. Already Pollan’s treaty seems to be shot out the window. Saving our food sources, and global genetic biodiversity, will be a challenging task indeed.