Nibbles: FAO, Spirituality, ASARECA, Land use, Conservation agriculture, REDD, Colombian beans, Immigrant cooking, Exploding watermelons, AnGR

Calestous Juma gives new FAO head some advice: find a role, build on what farmers do and know, engage civil society, help governments prioritize, and slash bureaucracy.
Religion and conservation: friends of enemies?
Eastern Africa Agricultural Productivity Project seems to be mainly about setting up regional centres of excellence in dairy, cassava, rice and wheat. Maybe ASARECA should ask for some advice from Prof. Juma?
Land use map of the UK. Let the mash-upping begin.
Training in sustainable conservation agriculture in India and Mexico. But how really sustainable is the whole thing if based on modern varieties? Oh, and Brazil too.
Saving the Amazon for $33 a month.Or maybe just a buck?
Local cooking a long way from home, Part I; from Colombia to Washington DC.
Local cooking a long way from home, Part II; from everywhere to New York’s Lower East Side.
Don’t worry, exploding watermelons are perfectly safe, and legal.
FAO updates its webpage on “Implementing the Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources” and documents the fact by providing a time stamp. Jeremy chuffed.

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.