Nibbles: EU rules, Squash, Potato, Agroforestry textbook, Wine for health, Ag history, Breeding stories, Food security reports, Talking to policymakers

Plants for Europe is (are?) incensed about new EU regulations. Should it/they be?
Squash is a Native American word, natch. I bet they’re incensed.
Speaking of Native American crops, here’s a big writeup on the potato, including great pix, and nice shoutout for the CIP genebank.
If you live in the tropics and want to learn about agroforestry, you could just go out and talk to the first smallholder you meet. Or you could read a textbook.
A roundtable on whether genetics can help us figure out whether wine is good for you. When they do the large scale clinical trial, as they surely must, I’ll be first in line.
The breakthroughs of agriculture. Sadly, working out the seed viability equation does not feature. Nor does vegetarianism.
Breeding does, though. And here’s an example why, featuring soybeans.
And another from rice: IRRI bags another silver bullet gene.
And we’ll soon have those in cotton too.
Which is all fully recognized in the latest WRI report on how to feed the world.
Though not in this other mega-report on Brazil, at least not quite so explicitly.
“We need more research” is the wrong answer. Even when it’s breeding?

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.