Nibbles: Tonga, Seeds, Fusarium wilt, Fungal beer, Cover crops, Gates Foundation

Tonga joins the ITPGRFA. About time too. I started talking to them about it 10 years ago.
What exactly does it mean to be “amped” about seeds? And do they have to be organic? And do these Filipino ones qualify?
Enough with the banana scare stories already!
Go on, nominate someone for the World Food Prize.
Mushroom beer? Yeah, ok.
USDA waxes nerdy about cover crops.
Gateses’ Big Bet for African agriculture. Move along, nothing to see here.

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.