Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Welcome, Carnival goers

If you’ve just arrived here from Scientia Pro Publica, welcome. We’re never quite sure where we fit in the overall “science” matrix. Agronomy is science, sure, and so is plant breeding, mostly, and GMOs well, obviously. But stuff like making better use of agrobiodiversity often sits uncomfortably with people who want simple solutions to problems that they see as simple too. Not enough water? Irrigate! Saline soil? Breed saline tolerance! Missing vitamin A? Engineer it into a staple!

So it was interesting to find Eric Michael Johnson’s analysis of policy options for Haiti at the latest Scientia Pro Publica. The main thrust seems to be that rewarding Haitian farmers for good behaviour rather than punishing them for bad is more likely to have the beneficial impacts sought as Haiti struggles back from disaster. Trouble is, the policy analysts seems to think that using high-tech seeds and more fertilizer are the best good behaviours to incentivize; there are other options, you know. And as Johnson points out, the government of Haiti is not allowed to subsidize its farmers, not even for seeds and fertilizer. This is nuts. So is Mauka to Maui’s wonderful story of The ant and the toad, in a good way. 1

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Featured: Genebanks

Glenn thinks we ought to formalise the social network needs of breeders, genebank managers et al.

Does this type of discussion occur naturally? Or do we need something to motivate it? … Maybe we should do something about it?

We could write up a project and find somebody to fund it. Maybe it would be a risky project — social networking for crop improvement (genetic resources use) … But would it be any riskier than the current database hell projects?

Good point, well made. Off you go.

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Corn-fed is grass-fed

See if you can spot the problems with this line of reasoning:

  1. Grass-fed beef is good for you, the environment, and everything.
  2. Corn (maize, and barley, and wheat) is a grass.
  3. Corn-fed beef is grass-fed beef.
  4. Corn-fed beef is good for you, the environment, and everything.

Over at Muck and Mystery Gary does a fine job of unpacking all that logic. Sample:

[T]his would make some sense if they fed the whole corn plant to their cattle rather than just the seeds, and did so while the plant was still alive and vegetative, so that then cattle would get some green with all of that yellow. Better still, grow corn varieties bred for grazing (they exist) that produced more leaf, more nutritious stalks, and less seeds.

There’s more too, on how exaggerated claims from one end of a spectrum call forth exaggerated claims from the other, rather than the nuanced interpretation they really need. Gary talks about backlash. I suspect anyone trying to make sense of the arguments, in beef as in just about anything, would suffer whiplash instead.

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Nibbles: Genomes, Sorghum squared, Tropical forests, UG99, Vanilla, Himalayan agriculture

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Research on healthier food systems

Food Systems and Public Health: Linkages to Achieve Healthier Diets and Healthier Communities is a special edition of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition. Scads of research papers and articles, all free to download, at least some of which almost certainly will have a bearing on one of our main interests, the use of agricultural biodiversity to feed into dietary diversity, with all the benefits that can bring.

So many papers, so little time …