Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment

USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
$5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
First farmers gave a fig.
The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”

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.