Since then however, the Plan hasn't seen any action and there is no hard money on the table. The U.S. and Europe together with Australia wanted every species that could be prepared at the kitchen sink. This might be good political strategy but it is bad menu planning. Colonialism has often led to more of a country's crop genetic diversity ending up in gene banks in the hands of the colonizer than in the fields of the colony. No country is remotely self-sufficient in crop germplasm.
Short lists mean starvation.
The short grocery list is a real problem too for the largest network of public agricultural researchers working in the South. Yams, for example, are a basic food crop for some of the world's poorest people. But yams are not one of the five widely accepted crops for exchange. They know what could happen if they fail. Most of all, they know that neither the funding nor the food is on the table now because their political leaders back home remain unperturbed.