Valuing Crop Biodiversity: On-Farm Genetic Resources and Economic Change

by Melinda Smale

Overview

In agricultural systems, a diversity of crops and varieties in essential to combat the risks farmers face from pests, diseases and variations in climate. Crop biodiversity also underpins the range of dietary needs and services that consumers demand as economies change. There is growing concern, however, about declining services that consumers demand as ecomomies change. This book contributes to a better understanding of the challenges involved in maintaining local crop biodiversity within a rapidly changing global food system, and to policy debates related to the Convention on Biological Diversity. It provides empricial studies conducted in the field with farmers and crop scientists across a range of agricultural economies and income levels, applying economic tools and methods for valuing and managing crop biodiversity on farms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780851990835
Publisher:	CABI
Publication date:	12/12/2005
Series:	Cabi Series
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.88(w) x 9.75(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I: Introduction
Concepts, Metrics, and Plan of the Book

Part II: Private Value: Stated Preferences of Farmers
Crop valuation and farmer response to change: Implications for in situ conservation of maize in Mexico
Farmer demand for agricultural biodiversity in Hungary's transition economy: A Choice experiment approach
Demand for attributes and on farm conservation of coffee in Ethiopia

Part III: Private Value: Revealed Preferences of Farmers
Missing markets, migration and crop biodiversity in the Mexican milpa system: A household farm model
Determinants of cereal diversity on household farms in the highlands of northern Ethiopia
Demand for cultivar attributes and the biodiversity of bananas in Uganda
Farmer management of agricultural biodiversity in Hungary's transition economy
Rural development and the diversity of potatoes on farms in Cajamarca, Peru

Part IV: Public Values, Villages and Institutions
Managing rice biodiversity on farms: The choices of farmers and breeders in Nepal
Determinants of cereal diversity in villages of Northern Ethiopia
Social institutions and seed systems: the diversity of fruits and nuts in Uzbekistan
Village seed systems and the biological diversity of millet crops in southern India
Seeds supply and on farm demand for diversity: a case study of Eastern Ethiopia
Institutions, stakeholders, and the management of crop genetic sources on Hungarian family farms
Cooperatives, wheat diversity and crop productivity in southern Italy

Part V: Conclusions
Scope, limitations and future directions
An annotated bibliography of published literature about the economics of conserving crop biological diversity on farms