Nibbles: Farm subsidies, Pressing and naming plants, Cowpea primer, California crop maps, Caribbean mangoes, ABS meeting, Banana mapping, Sarada Krishnan, Indian millets, Apple varieties, Early modern bees

Fun Twitter thread on zombie tropes about farm subsidies in the US. Should have been a blog post, though.
Kew boffins on how to make an herbarium specimen. More complicated than you might think. And why it’s important. While I’m at it, this is how you use herbarium specimens etc. to name plants.
IITA genebank manager interviewed about cowpea.
Everything you ever wanted to know about the history of cartography. Not very relevant here, I know, but a monumental achievement that I wanted to celebrate. And here’s a wonderful example of cutting-edge online cartography that will no doubt feature in a future edition.
The banana mapping project is progressing nicely.
Damn, I missed the St Lucia mango festival. Next year?
Africa discusses ABS.
Dr Sarada Krishnan of Denver Botanic Garden profiled. She worked on the global coffee conservation strategy. Among many other things.
Millets to the rescue in Gujarat.
Red Delicious bumped from top apple spot.
Amateurs have spread information about beekeeping since 16th century.

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.