Nibbles: Chickens, Markets x 2, Bananas, Cover crops, Pyramid foods, Beans, Maize, Austrian diversity, Tuberous legume, Natural wine, Figs and mulberries, Meetings x 3, Purple sweet potatoes, Bambusetum

Backyard chickens too much hassle? We have the solution for you.
Supplies go up, prices go down. Those pesky speculators had nothing to do with it.
Prices go up … The story for India’s agrciultural labourers.
Colombia’s loss will Ecuador’s gain. Predictions for bananas in the 2060s.
Conventional farmer loves cover crops. Shurely shome mishtake.
Building the pyramids. It’s a tough job, but at least you eat well.
Beans with benefits. On the road with a breeder in Rwanda.
Chinese maize diversity explored, a bit.
Massive diversity of all sorts of thing, in German.
Rhizowen has another favourite underutilised legume crop: Amphicarpaea bracteata subsp edgeworthii.
It’s vino, but is it natural?
How is a fig like a mulberry? The Botanist in the Kitchen explains.
Capturing wild relative and landrace diversity for crop improvement. A conference, in June 2014.
Agricultural Biodiversity Community @ Work. A conference, in June 2013. PENHA was there.
Preparations are underway for Kew’s Great Seed Swap. Call me dumb, but I cannot see a date anywhere there.
Purple sweet potatoes to dye for.
Oh boy! A regional genebank for bamboo. A bambusetum, no less.

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.