Nibbles: Value chains, CAP, Intercropping, Tree trouble, Phenotyping

Sustainable value chains made easy. Perhaps too easy.
An end to crazy EU agricultural subsidies? Don’t hold your breath. What would it mean for agricultural biodiversity?
Yesterday it was rotation, today it is intercropping, and more. Is there something in the air?
Ten new things we learned about trees this year. The one I would add is that eucalypts are rain forest species.
Way more about high-throughput phenotyping than I need to know. But somehow still less than I’d like to know. Thanks, Tom.

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.