Nibbles: Organic ag, Local ag, Pigeonpea, African cereals, Vanilla genebank, Ag R&D, Ziziphus

Blaming organic agriculture for Sri Lanka’s woes is a little…simplistic.
Deriding food localism as luddite is a little…simplistic. I wonder if there will be a rural re-exodus in Sri Lanka.
Pigeonpea is back on the menu in Malawi. Organically produced, no doubt.
Will it be closely followed by sorghum and millet in Zimbabwe?
Brazil puts together a vanilla collection. Because you can only go so far on sorghum and pigeonpea.
Meanwhile, “…China Has Become the World’s Largest Funder of Agricultural R&D,” displacing the US. Including local and organic ag, pigeonpea and sorghum? I wonder…
Looks like jujube might be an example of US-China collaboration on ag research. Maybe.

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.