Nibbles: Graphic agriculture, Nutrition, Climate change, Giant pumpkins, Economic development, Roman millet, Fairtrade, Jojoba and guayule

Agriculture 101: A graphic novel. Am I the only one who thinks novels aren’t necessarily true? First installment.
Bioversity has a bunch of factsheets on Nutritious Underutilized Species.
Why is a cacao tree not like an ATM? Because the ATM still pays out when its hot.
Speaking of which, big long thought piece on Food Security and Climate Change.
Giant pumpkins; not much diversity here, except in the agronomic approaches.
Better access to markets may threaten specialist smallholder farmers. The case of Namibia.
Ancient Roman ate lots of C4 photosynthesiser: millet!
Wake up and smell the lack of green coffee.
A couple of wannabe Mexican industrial crops get some exposure.

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.