Nibbles: Gums & resins, ITPGRFA, Soy sauce, Med diet, Aquaculture, Cacao, Sugar industry, Nomenclature, Yam (Chinese), Urban agriculture

After yesterday’s thing on gum arabic, CIFOR’s blogger weighs in on frankincense and myrrh. Gums and resins renaissance, anyone?
VoA on the ITPGRFA, with interview goodness.
Soy sauce in bullet points.
A Spanish food historian’s deconstruction of the Mediterranean diet deconstructed by Rachel Laudan.
Fish in paddies: here comes the science.
Côte d’Ivoire to revive cacao cultivation. By building a research centre?
Pleasant, cultured and not so short foray into the history of the sugar industry in Kenya and Mauritius.
You say sweet potato. I say yam.
You say yam, so does Rhizowen, and yet … he’s talking about neither Ipomoea nor Manihot.
Urban agriculture thriving in DR Congo.

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.