• Host a volunteer school food gardener (in the US).
• M.S. Swaminathan’s menu for food security in India. Burp.
• Purmina Menon’s menu for food security in India takes us beyond food. Pardon me.
• Anyone for edible orchids? Anissa Helou on salep.
• Wasp flies in hot pursuit of cassava mealybugs.
• Melinda ♡ breastfeeding. The basis for sound nutrition.
• Humped conch got bigger as a result of human activities — despite being hunted. Complex.
• “Africa to become world’s breadbasket.” Makes a change from being the world’s basketcase.

• What’s behind “the environmentalist’s paradox“?
• Growing vegetables in the Sahel. What could possibly go wrong?
• And for the EurekAlert trifecta: the history of the pomodoro in Italy.
• Kew Magazine looks at seeds, big time.

• Bioversity International and UNEP jointly pile on the pressure to preserve Pavlovsk …
• … as do plant professors from University of Wisonsin.
• Mexican maize farmers using CIMMYT genebank materials to adapt their varieties. Why not in Africa, then?
• High praise for a novel on opium.
• Mat Kinase takes Time to task over lacklustre organics article.
• King Goodwill Zwelithini calls for One Home One Garden campaign to support food-growing and nutrition.
• Feasts predate agriculture. Well, yeah.
• Female farmers … a bloke writes.
• Great pic on the joys of modern transhumance.
• Resurrecting the Maize King. And why not?
• More than anyone has a right to know about dogs in the ancient world.

• CIFOR has a blog!
• Nice series of videos on eating weeds.
• Video on Peru’s “Andean rodeo.” You heard me.
• Africa needs drought-tolerant maize. Ok, fair enough, but here’s my question. Shouldn’t they have done this study before doing all that breeding? Oh, who knows, maybe they did.
• “Biofortification will thus remain relevant to poor rural populations in the years to come, as their incomes will still be far too low to afford a more diversified diet.” What? Who says a diversified diet need be expensive?
• Russia faces looming buckwheat crisis. At least the genetic resources are safe in the Vavilov Institute. Unless of course somebody decides to, I don’t know, build luxury villas there, or something.

A long article from The New Yorker last November is all about the world of artificial flavours — but it does contain a fascinating section on the diversity of citrus fruits that the taste-makers explore in search of inspiration.

• Fine memoir of Sir Bent Skovmand. Thanks Dag.
• Rice yields falling — and not just in experimental stations. The paper.
• In all the eulogies to the inventor of the Cheez Doodle, a note of truth.
• You could buy the Pavlovsk genebank site for just USD3.3 million, it says here. Is that even doable?
• Meanwhile, over in England, Researchers Rush to Fill Noah’s Ark Seed Bank While Politicians Bicker.
• Meanwhile, in Australia, worries about declines in livestock diversity.
• EUCARPIA’s meetings calendar. Handy.

• GM canola goes wild, Jeremy is not surprised
• More — much more — on maize cultivation in Chaco Canyon.
• Conference in London on Securing Future Food. Agrobiodiversity should be present.
• Chefs embrace agrobiodiversity — in Maine.
• Price spikes: climate change or knee-jerk policies? (Both?)

• Nepal’s malnutrition rate apparently the highest in world. But the Micronutrient Initiative is on it. But what about homegardens, I hear you ask. And rice biofortification?
• The advice I’ve been waiting for all my life: better nutrition through alcohol.
• The plight of Kenyan tea workers.
• Harlem church helps Ethiopian coffee farmers.
• Botanic gardens drop flowers, do food. About time too. And botanical art too.
• Jeremy’s farro photos.
• “Iconic” catfish in trouble due to Mekong dam. Everything is an icon these days. Something to do with post-modernism, I guess.
• Seedbomb something today. You’ll feel better.
• WTF is it with garlic in China?
• EMBRAPA reaches out to Africa.
• KARI scientists push Opuntia for livestock. Ok, but surely there are enough native desert plants in Kenya to be going on with? Well, maybe not.
• Zimbabwe market turns to sun-dried vegetables. Wish I knew what umfushwa was, though.
• The Rice-Ducks Integrated Farming System sounds like great fun.
• Why the salmon thrives in Oregon: “Tribal people have practiced a natural, sustained-yield conservation since time immemorial and are taught to plan seven generations ahead.”

• Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
• No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
• “Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
• Be like the bamboo, man.
• From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
• The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
• Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.

A couple of days ago we Nibbled a set of cacao photos from Sustainable Harvest International. I thought at the time it probably deserved better exposure, and I’m happy to be given the excuse to provide it by the appearance on YouTube of a sweet little cartoon on the cacao tree, courtesy of Kew. And by the start of a series of posts on how chocolate is made, by Rachel Laudan.

And speaking of cacao, this just in: A London hedge fund last week took delivery of contracts for about 7% of the world’s cacao producction, according to a report in The Guardian. (h/t The Tracing Paper). Coincidentally, or not, the price of cacao has increased 150% over the past 18 months.