Category Archives: Agriculture

The history of Dutch potato breeding (1888-2018): from hobby to industry

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On the 15th of May 2019 Jan van Loon defended his PhD thesis about the history of Dutch potato breeding. This thesis was written in Dutch (see thesis cover below). Over the past two years we (Jan and his supervisors) have been working on a paper in English, summarizing the main findings of his thesis (which is over 400 pages). This was quite a challenging endeavor, but we are pleased that the paper was accepted by Potato Research and was published online this week as an open access article.

Abstract of the paper
The Netherlands has a world-leading position in potato breeding, but little is known about the factors that led to this success. This paper analyses the factors that have influenced the development of potato breeding in the Netherlands. This study is based on research of the grey and scientific literature and interviews with various representatives from the Dutch potato breeding sector. We distinguish four periods: (i) Before 1888, no potato breeding in the Netherlands existed whereas in other countries first crosses occurred. (ii) 1888–1940, more individuals started breeding out of interest and hobby to overcome the commonly observed degeneration of potato. (iii) 1940–1967 the emergence of a corporate set up of breeding by private companies collaborating with small breeders. (iv) 1967–present, towards full-fledged breeding industry supported by the new Seeds and Planting Materials Act (ZPW) in 1967 including the breeders’ rights. Many factors including cultural practices, diseases, and market that determine the strategy of breeding have been analyzed. The development is most of all ‘crop driven’ to maintain the level of production. But it was also ‘export driven’ leading to the development of an export-oriented seed potato sector. The conclusion is that three elements were dominant in the development of a strong potato breeding sector: (1) the broad cooperation among all players in the potato chain, (2) the design of the institutional infrastructure, and (3) the remuneration of the breeding work through legislation regarding plant breeders’ rights. The study ends with an outlook on future trends, one of them leading from an open to a more closed business culture.

Boerderijovernames als mogelijkheid voor landbouwtransitie: van stoppende conventionele naar startende ecologische boer

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Marcha van Wijk*

Introductie
Deze blog is een samenvatting van mijn masterscriptie over de overname van conventionele boerderijen naar ecologische boerderijen. Het scriptieonderzoek heeft deze overname verkend als potentieel onderdeel van een landbouwtransitie naar meer ecologische vormen van landbouw. Terwijl boerderijovernames vaak worden bekeken vanuit een financiële lens, belicht mijn onderzoek de emotionele en relationele aspecten, die vaak over het hoofd worden gezien, terwijl ze een grote invloed hebben op de overname.

Meer dan de helft van de Nederlandse boeren van boven de vijfenvijftig jaar heeft nog geen opvolger. Dit is een van de oorzaken dat gemiddeld drie boerenbedrijven per dag worden gestopt in Nederland. Vooral kleinschalige boeren vinden vaak geen opvolger, wat ervoor zorgt dat steeds meer kleine boerderijen verdwijnen en grote boerderijen groter worden door het opkopen van vrijgekomen land. Dit is in tegenspraak met opkomende visies over duurzame voedselsystemen, zoals de Farm to Fork Strategy (2020) en iPES FOOD (2016) die juist pleiten voor natuur-inclusieve en kleinschalige landbouw.

Mijn onderzoek verkent een alternatief op deze trend. Wat als we de overname van conventionele boerderijen door ecologische – bijvoorbeeld biologische, regeneratieve en agro-ecologische – boeren kunnen faciliteren? Dit zou zowel het gebrek aan een opvolger oplossen, als een landbouwtransitie richting ecologische landbouw op gang brengen.
 
Echter, toegang tot land is een grote barrière voor zij-instromers. Hoewel dit vaak in verband wordt gebracht met de financiële kosten van grond en een boerderij, onderstreep ik de noodzaak van een holistische aanpak en onderzoek ik affectieve processen tijdens deze overname. Wanneer een boerderij wordt overgedragen, vinden er namelijk grote veranderingen plaats en dat heeft emotionele en relationele invloed op de boeren.

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The control of transboundary plant diseases and the problem of the public good: Lessons from Fusarium wilt in banana

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Kees Jansen and Jaye de la Cruz.

The paper “The control of transboundary plant diseases and the problem of the public good” in NJAS (open access; https://doi.org/10.1080/27685241.2023.2261402) reviews the debate on the public good and builds on the sociological and political critiques of economistic positions in this debate. It discusses public good elements in transboundary disease control taking Fusarium wilt as an instructive case.

Abstract
Many plant diseases and pests cannot be controlled on-farm as they spread from one field or region to another. This opens up a series of interconnected social, political, and economic questions besides the common technical questions about the spread, impact and management of the disease or pest. A new genotype of the soil-born fungus Fusarium, called Tropical Race 4, is extremely virulent, widely destroying banana crops destined for domestic and international markets, and spreading rapidly in Southeast Asia and recently to other countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It threatens both staple food production and the export of bananas. The international research and policy-making communities on bananas have been alarmed and are calling for concerted action to control this disease. This paper supports the idea that Fusarium wilt control has to be regarded as a public good but also finds that the public good is being conceptualized in divergent ways. It raises the question as to what gaps exist in the current understanding of providing that public good. The paper identifies a set of key problems, including the problem of anticipation by governments, a neglect of histories of political economic oppositions in the banana sector, the strictures of sovereignty-thinking in multilateral responses, and the aversion that neo-liberal models of governance develop to the public good.

Read more: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/27685241.2023.2261402

Unpacking gender mainstreaming: a critical discourse analysis of agricultural and rural development policy in Myanmar and Nepal by Dawn Cheong et al.

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Dawn Cheong is PhD-candidate at the Rural Sociology Group (dawn.cheong@wur.nl) . Her first paper has just been published open access in ‘Agriculture and Human Values‘:
Cheong, D.D., Bock, B. & Roep, D. (2023) Unpacking gender mainstreaming: a critical discourse analysis of agricultural and rural development policy in Myanmar and Nepal https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10502-x.

Abstract
Conventional gender analysis of development policy does not adequately explain the slow progress towards gender equality. Our research analyses the gender discourses embedded in agricultural and rural development policies in Myanmar and Nepal. We find that both countries focus on increasing women’s participation in development activities as a core gender equality policy objective. This creates a binary categorisation of participating versus non-participating women and identifies women as responsible for improving their position. At the same time, gender (in)equality is defined exclusively as a women’s concern. Such discourses, as constitutive practices, produce specific knowledge about rural women and new subjectivities that prescribe and govern them solely as subjects of development. Our research suggests that such a limited discursive practice invisiblises gendered power relations and structural and institutional issues, ultimately slowing progress towards gender equality. We demonstrate the importance of studying policy as discourse, beyond the effectiveness of policies or mainstreaming tools, and call for empirical evidence on the impact of these discourses on women’s subjectivities and lived experiences.