Nibbles: Qat, Tomato, Climate change squared, Documentation, Food diaspora, Mapping Africa, Gout, Chicken origins, HealthMap, Olive, Crop mixtures

Catha edulis bad for Yemen economy. Having been waved a gun at by a qat-chewing Somali teenager, I can testify it’s bad for other things as well.
Amy Goldman on the heirloom tomato.
Biology Letters special feature on climate change and biodiversity.
And more on climate change, this time its likely effect on livelihoods.
All you ever wanted to know about plant genetic resources conservation in Germany.
“Isnâ€™t it crazy to think that everything we eat or use that comes from plants at one time grew completely wild?” Well, not so much.
Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. (Watch out, very large file.)
Another reason not to drink sugary soft drinks: gout. Coconut water anyone?
Pre-Columbian Chilean chickens could have come from anywhere, not just Polynesia.
Mapping diseases.
A 12th century olive genebank in Morocco.
Traditional Ethiopian barley/wheat mixtures (hanfets) have some advantages over pure stands.

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.