agriculture - Reverse, European Project to Preserve Biodiversity

adaptation of species and for human needs. A pioneer of modern studies on agrobiodiversity, Nikolaj I. Vavilov (8) was
the first, in the early decades of the 20th century, to point out that a wealth of variety in crop species still remained
to be revealed to science. His original phyto-geographical research method led to his main discovery: the areas with
the greatest biodiversity are those where the species originated. He called those areas species’ “centres of origin”.
Rural communities around the world, especially in those areas, often in developing countries, profited from this
diversity until the start of the Green Revolution 60 years ago.
The Green Revolution, the major period of change in agriculture, was characterized on the one hand, by the creation
of new production tools (machinery, fertilizers, pesticides) needed to achieve the goals of maximum productivity, and,
on the other hand, by the creation of selected varieties and breeds characterized by a narrow genetic base, allowing
them to exploit the productive potential of the production tools developed. This led to new, uniform and productive
varieties, suited to high-input agriculture.
The evident success of the Green Revolution, in terms of global food production, population growth and the economic
development of some areas, came at a high cost with the dramatic impoverishment of agro-ecosystems and their
related rural communities. The old varieties and breeds that were the basis of agriculture before the Green Revolution
- less uniform but more adaptable, more rich in diversity and therefore more reliable in hostile environments - were
quickly replaced by a few varieties and breeds selected in environments that were often very different from those to
which they were then introduced. Species and varieties traditionally grown locally and suited to a specific territory
gradually disappeared. To meet the needs of mechanization, hedges and crop rotation also disappeared.
The extreme simplification of the systems broke the balance and the link between environment and agricultural
process: the system became vulnerable.
This vulnerability has been evidenced in recent decades by the devastation of entire harvests, both in developing and
developed countries, due to the wide distribution of pathogen races to which the commercially available cultivars,
homogeneous and closely related to one another, are very sensitive. The great famine in Ireland, which occurred
between 1845 and 1847, caused around a million deaths and was the main driver of the great emigration to America.
This is an example, which occurred before the Green Revolution, of the effects of extreme simplification of an
agricultural system: potatoes were the main food source for the poorest and there was mainly one variety grown,
which was extremely sensitive to the fungus Phytophtora infestans. The parasite found fertile ground and completely
destroyed the crops.
Increasing biodiversity in crops, or recovering the lost biodiversity, can be a powerful tool for guaranteeing food
production against various kinds of threats, including those related to climate change (Ceccarelli, 2009).
At this time, when industrial agriculture showed its vulnerability and its effects on territory and on the social fabric,
people realized that much of the diversity created by centuries of evolution and adaptation was disappearing, often
together with the related communities. The term “genetic erosion” is used to indicate the process of the disappearance
of systems, species, varieties, and breeds caused by drastic changes to the environment or in human activity. In the
case of agriculture, the term gives an idea of the meaning of loss of biological resources, but not that of the loss of
culture that accompanies it.
According to FAO statistics, today there are about 7,000 species of plants used by man as food, but only 150 are
cultivated. About 75% of food consumed by humans comes from only 12 plant species and five animal species and
about 50% of the same food is provided by only 4 plant species (rice, corn, wheat and potato) and three major species of
animals (belonging to cattle, pigs and poultry). Even species traditionally grown in the past and particularly important
for nutrition in poor countries, as well as in marginal areas of developed countries, are now underutilized or ignored.
The remaining diversity in agriculture, partially preserved in germplasm banks located throughout the world, is
still present in cultivation in marginal areas where industrial agriculture is not developed, because of soil, climatic
or cultural reasons. Elderly people often maintain old varieties and breeds in their home gardens, because of an
attachment to their specific tastes or methods of cultivation, which are different from that of commercial varieties.
Especially in Europe, the conservation of local varieties and breeds is related to the deep connection between them
and their territory of origin, where tradition has an important role. Nevertheless, because of the old age of their
owners and the changing social conditions, those landraces and local breeds are now threatened by extinction.
(8) Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov (1887 -1943) was the botanist, geneticist, biologist, geographer, explorer, agronomist and plant breeder who developed the
fundamental theory on the centres of origin of cultivated plants. During his activity, he organized a series of botanical-agronomic expeditions, collecting
seeds from every part of the globe, and created the world’s largest collection of plant seeds at that time, in Leningrad. Vavilov first identified five centres
of origin for species, which became eight in his last papers: China, India, Central Asia, Near East, the Mediterranean coast, Ethiopia, Central and South
America, especially in mountain areas or highlands. His theory and observations were fundamental to the birth of modern studies on crop biodiversity.
EUROPEAN AGRICULTURE AND BIODIVERSITY CHARTER
AGRICULTURE AND BIODIVERSITY: IMPACTS AND INTERRELATIONS
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