Same mindset, different approaches

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Hello,
following the recent discussion on phrasing ('Landrace Gardening' -- finding alternative phrasing options for outreach - #15 by Justin), and me discovering the work of Salvatore Ceccarelli (which I’m in contact with now and who much appreciate what he saw on the Landrace Gardening youtube channel where I have send him to), I found that it could be good to make one topic about practitionners (“pioneers” or whatever…) having the same mindset, and so more or less the same practice.

Because personnally I now know only this other person, I start with him: Salvatore Ceccarelli, coming from this stance : research scientist, barley breeder, mainly working in the Middle East, who first found out that it was kind of absurd to breed new materials in research station with controlled soil, fertilizers, chemicals, etc. with eventually few successes on “real” soil, notably on marginal lands, then worked with farmers (what he calls “participatory plant breeding”) on their own lands… then went to creating modern landraces, mainly of barley, wheat, and oats with real success, notably on the poorest soils, allways working WITH the farmers. Hear that excerpts from “Evolutionary populations (EP): living gene banks in farmers fields” coauthored by Salvatore :

Blockquote
Nemat Salemian, a farmer in Anjirak (Iran), recalls his first encounter with EPB (Evolutionary Population of Breadwheat). “We received this wheat from another farmer who told us that it’s a mixture of hundreds of different varieties and that we should plant it in our worst soil. My father said that in the 80 years that he has been a farmer, he has never seen better plants, despite the very bad soil and the climatic conditions this year.”

Here is a paper he published on his blog to sum up in simple terms all about his modern landraces… oups: “evolutionary populations”

In this interview (part 1 part 2), made by an other scientist, you will hear his changes of mindset, in relation to farmers, who he considers as “heros” or “friends”, which much differs from the usual agricultural scientists arrogance, particularly in the Middle East. There you will see the man: humble, inspired, emotional… and you will get how and why his mindset changed progressively, towards giving back the power to farmers through seeds, through these “evolutionary population” which they can adapt fast and share with others…

There you will see him with his wife Stafania Grando standing in a wheat field in Italy, talking to an english speaking farmer about this “Evolutionary Population”: .

The most interesting interview on the technical aspects I have found is here : he is talking to a turkish YT channel of scientists, so the langage is usual scientific vocabulary. Don’t mind delays, the interview starts at 5’15" and there are translations taking time. The first hour is very dense.

Then here is the link to his plea for Landrace Gardening… oups, sorry for “Evolutionary Plant Breeding”, written by him and his wife, and published in 2022 : Evolutionary Plant Breeding : Salvatore Ceccarelli and Stefania Grando : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
It is not the easiest read, but for those with a scientific background, it is very interesting, detailed (172 pages!), full of references, graphs and… pictures :slight_smile:

Eventually, the link to his Researchgate page, if some are interested by his scientific papers: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Salvatore-Ceccarelli

So… that’s it for links… I contacted him a few days ago to know if and how I could get some seeds of his populations and… the contact is made, he has been very gentle, and an italian farmer who will send some to me. (…Europeans, please tell me if you are interested by such seeds, thus, there are connections to be made in Italy where they have already made progresses on zucchinis landraces, “mixtures” of legumes, etc.)

I would so much love hearing Joseph interviewing Salvatore: another inspired man coming from another stance, and who has worked in other countries, but with a similar mindset, practice… could be a good cross :slight_smile: …

… then, do you know other approaches, kind of parallel to Joseph’s and ours? The same good story, idea, told with other modern clothes (i.e. words)?

Edit 09/10: I add this short podcast (35’) where he talks of his experience as a scientist working with farmers and all the logic behind the “EPs”: it is about giving back the power to the farmers, it is about autonomy, empowerment, and communities S4E3 - Salvatore Ceccarelli > PBS International

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A very interesting man. Great to hear of a scientist promoting evolutionary plant breeding by those who grow the crops.

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Great post!

Personally I feel ‘evolutionary plant breeding’ fits much better from what I’m doing and what I see going on in this forum than ‘landrace gardening’, which to me now I’ve read the literature, sounds more like gardeners on a small scale, growing traditional landraces, rather than actually breeding or encouraging/initiating adaptation. Though I guess that conversation was the topic of the other thread.

But yes it seems like the same work! That’s awesome that they will be sending seeds. I hope to have more land in the near future so when that comes I would definitely be interested in seeds. What different crops is he working with? And is there work with that group in cooler Summer, less sunny parts? I think that’s one thing that really separates some of us Northern Europeans from the folk in the US where they might have short seasons in places but strong plentiful sunshine, and mere earliness often isn’t enough, like with tomatoes and peppers for example.

Well, from the link I shared in the comment of mine you referenced in the OP, here’s what they say on the origin of that ‘Balcaskie Landrace wheat’:

This is a ‘modern landrace’ formed by mixing three historic Scottish varieties (Rouge d’Ecosse, Golden Drop and Hunters), growing them together and then sowing the resulting seed. In 2020, a high diversity Danish winter wheat population from Agrologica (developed by Anders Borgen) will be added to the Balcaskie landrace.

Here’s that breeder’s bio from the ‘Food and Agriculture Organization’ website:

Anders Borgen has been an organic farmer for 35 years and has for the past 15 years working as a private organic plant breeder in Northern Jutland, Denmark. He has studied agricultural science and philosophy and has a Ph.D. in Agriculture. Hannes Lorenzen meets Anders Borgen at the European Cereal Diversity Conference in Kalö near Aarhus in Denmark. For the past 10 years, cereal enthusiasts have met annually in Scandinavia and four times at the European level in the Let’s Liberate Diversity Network.

Here are some quotes from him this page:

You call yourself a nurd – a special kind of stubborn. What is so crazy about working with organic cereals?
Maybe because I was told to be crazy in what I am doing. But I am just convinced of it. Here in Kalö Organic Farm school I studied thirty five years ago and I am still working with cereals. Already back then I saw that organic farming had some problems, especially with seeds and varieties fit for the purpose of doing without pesticides and artificial fertilizers. But organic is much more. It is about observation of how plants grow and develop under specific circumstances, and to put the cropping system into a bigger context. Most of the problems in agriculture have their roots in the lack of diversity. In cereals, it is lack of diversity within each field and also between fields. Pesticides or and plant breeding can to some extend control the diseases, but the fundamental problem of lost diversity remains.

When I had understood that, I focused on this problem for quite a while.

Breeding for organic is not very developed yet and there is almost no market for organic seeds.
The problem is of course that organic was a niche for a long time and that it was and still is allowed to use conventional seeds in organic farming. What I discovered was that the “new” varieties from conventional breeding had in fact produced new problems. Higher yields carried new weaknesses in other fields like weed competition. So I have tried to approach the problem in a more holistic way. That meant observing, selecting, and breeding in the context of organic farming, the living soil, competition with weeds, humidity, drought, wind, whatsoever. So my research and breeding idea is completely different. I do not care too much about specific characteristics of a variety, but the plant’s expression in the environment and in company with other plants.
[…]
Organic farming and markets grow, so they might need your support – what’s your response?
I have looked for people, not just breeders to work with. I look downstream of farming, getting in contact with consumers, restaurants, bakers, mills to find out about their preferences and needs. If you do not know what they want or what they do not like, you cannot select or breed properly. My work is not just for the farmers. If the baker goes for good bread quality, for natural dough, for good texture and specific taste, he or she needs the wheat or rye that fits for that purpose. So I need to know that. You see here at the cereal diversity conference a number of bakers who are not buying anything but tell me what they want. The same is true with the brewers. We have done some serious bread and beer tasting here which gives us ideas of how to work together for good quality food.

What do you expect after this conference?
This is not the first time we meet. We started as a network of Nordic seed savers, researchers and breeders. We got inspiration from many individuals like Hans Larsson and organisations like the Nordic Gene Bank and seeds network. We found out that there are many more people looking for the same thing across Europe like Arche Noah in Austria and many others. This time at the gathering we have strong groups also from the South of Europe and even from Australia. I believe we can talk of a movement of people who care for the future of organic seed saving and breeding.

And here’s a page of his papers, including:

  • ‘High Buffering Potential of Winter Wheat Composite Cross Populations to Rapidly Changing Environmental Conditions’
  • ‘Association Mapping for Common Bunt Resistance in Wheat Landraces and Cultivars’
    etc.
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Anders-Borgen
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I know Anders Borgen. One of the things he do, is to maintain at least one disease of cereals in his fields, to gain and retain multigenetic partial resistance, opposed to the unstable singlegentic total resistance (or total fail). He do some handpollination on gardenscale, but advocate and grow mixed landraces on fieldscale.

An other breeder in Denmark is Lars Westergaard, who breeds walnut and hazel. He also maintain the more difficult diseases on his property, to select naturally.

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That sounds great! I have been wondering about trying to preserve some late blight for using on tomato seedlings in spring time next year…

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Excerpt from S. Ceccarelli book I find interesting:

Evolutionary Plant Breeding_0104
Evolutionary Plant Breeding_0104502×709 65.1 KB

Figure 44. An example of divergent natural selection of an evolutionary bread wheat population: the ICARDA evolutionary bread wheat population after 10 years evolution in Sicily (left) and the same population after 10 years evolution in Tuscany (right) grown side by side in Marche in 2020 (courtesy of Pierluigi Valenti, Rocca Madre Cooperative).

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Just dropping this here.

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Thanks Hugo, that seems very very interesting for europeans.
That makes me think I would love to organise a web meeting this winter for europeans doing landrace gardening, to share information, know who is doing what… I will do it on a separate post…

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