Nibbles: Diverse diets, Ancient diets, Urban veggies, Medicinal phylogenetics, Double blind cowpeas, Adaptation hope, Livestock emissions, Climate change data, Afghani poppies, Aussie ag & breeders, Chinese agrobiodiversity, Weird cherry

Meaty presentation on how biodiversity in the food system delivers a diverse diet. Could hardly fail to, really, could it.
What’s a diverse diet ever done for me, asks ancient farmer.
Vegetables an important part of diverse diets, of course. Especially in urban areas.
Interesting EU project on the phylogenetics of medicinal plants. Any vegetables in there?
Improved cowpeas only improved when farmers know they are improved. Wow.
Some glimmers of hope on adaptation? Maybe.
Not all livestock bad for climate change. And room for improvement on those that are.
Yeah, but who cares, global warming is just a giant natural fluctuation, no? No.
Legalize it, already! Poppy cultivation as a climate change adaptation measure?
Australian agriculture unprepared for climate change? With all these fancy breeders and access to the world’s genebanks?
Meanwhile, in China, the focus is on food sovereignty.
And in Japan on its spaced out cherry tree.

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.