Nibbles: Biodiversity loss, Mapping, Mongolia, Ag origins, Polynesian voyaging, Hybrid fruits, Apricots, Bedouins, Donkeys, Chile, Cuba

How should journalists report biodiversity loss?
Ireland maps its threatened species, including a crop wild relative or two.
Eat like a nomad.
Why agriculture was such a bad idea.
“The heightened voyaging from A.D. 1000 to 1450 in eastern Polynesia was likely prompted by ciguatera fish poisoning.”
Is Floyd Zaiger the most prolific fruit breeder in the world? Read about his “designer fruits.”
“It is truly the apricots that have kept me interested and focused at this job for the past 22 years.”
Jordan’s Bedouins struggling to cope.
Donkeys running for their lives in Ghana.
Chile’s winemakers move south.
The continuing success story that is Cuban urban agriculture.

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.