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IFPRI ForumRelated Resource: ECOGENLit: Economics Literature on Crop and Livestock Genetic Resources
How do we go about valuing the diversity of crop, livestock, aquatic, and forest resources? Can an integrated research agenda lead to a better understanding of the costs and benefits of conserving these components of agrobiodiversity?
These questions were at the heart of discussions during a recent roundtable workshop "Managing Agricultural Biodiversity for Sustainable Development," organized by IFPRI on behalf of the System-wide Genetic Resources Programme (SGRP) of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). During the workshop, experts from fields ranging from ecology to economics came together to discuss how to assess optimal investment allocations among genetic resource management activities. Participants agreed that costs, benefits, and policy recommendations related to conserving biodiversity may differ if interactions between crops, livestock, aquatic, and tree resources are taken into account. For example, if farmers who grow diverse crops also maintain diverse livestock, then programs to support conservation of crop genetic diversity might have additional, unexpected benefits for livestock diversity. Analysis of these types of interactions will also help increase understanding of the role that genetic resources play in supplying ecosystem services, such as resistance to pests and diseases conferred by crop genetic diversity, or the conservation of habitats in the cases of forest and fish genetic resources. The concepts and approaches generated by workshop participants will be used to develop a new SGRP project that will apply an integrated approach to valuing genetic resources in the context of intensive farming systems.
The workshop, held at IFPRI's headquarters in Washington, D.C., on October 27-28, 2005, was a follow-up to a workshop held earlier in Nairobi by the SGRP and the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute (IPGRI). These meetings coincided with efforts by several CGIAR centers to focus attention on the use of economic methods to value crop genetic resources. Recent published material contributing to this goal include a CD-ROM called ECOGEN: Economics Literature on Crop and Livestock Genetic Resources, published for the SGRP by IFPRI, the International Livestock Research Institute, and IPGRI, and the book Valuing Crop Biodiversity: On-Farm Genetic Resources and Economic Change, edited by Melinda Smale of IFPRI, just published by CABI Publishing. Both of these products represent exciting new directions in applying economics research to the sustainable management of agrobiodiversity.