Nibbles: ABS in ITPGRFA, Wheat Yield Consortium, Plasticity and climate change, Sustainable intensification, Early agriculture

Outstanding Issues on ABS under the Multilateral System – a background study paper. Wait, there’s outstanding issues?
Wheat geeks meet.
Plastic plants will cope with climate change. Not what you think.
Nice write-up of the UK Foresight Food and Farming Futures report on Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture in Africa from Farming First.
First farmers not as productive as last foragers. One wonders why they bothered.

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.