- If you love water, here are 35 ways to save it. Part 1 and Part 2, 3 & 4 to come.
- I love the idea of tattooed apples.
- How can you not love low-arsenic rice varieties from Bangladesh? Maybe because they might be opening a hornets’ nest.
- The video camera loves farmers, and the feeling’s mutual. Extension is ready for its close-up.
- It’s a short step from over-exploitation to domestication. Lovely news for …
- … Malagasy farmers, who could love their wild yams to death. Good thing they’re nuts for cultivated yams.
- Darwinian Agriculture embraces a well-argued contrary view, even though Ford doesn’t necessarily agree.
- I like the idea of an online almanac for local climate change observations, but I’d love it even more if it went global.
- The ever-contrary Matt Ridley is happy to reaffirm his love for intensive agriculture because “with cheap light, an urban, multi-story hydroponic warehouse the size of Delaware could feed the world, leaving the rest for wilderness”.
- Gene Logsdon would love to see this headline: “Monsanto retreating before invading pigweed hordes.” Dream on, Gene.
- And what would today be without chocolate? I love that things are never as simple as they seem, even in the realm of Theobroma cacao.
Access to information
Some people have reported trouble accessing all the great stories at the Official Newsletter of Bioversity International — Asia, Pacific and Oceania Regional Office.
The big question: is it you, or is it them?
[poll id=”8″]
Thanks for voting.
LATER: Thanks, Bioversity!
@AgroBioDiverse Sorry that you are having continuing problems. We have added a PDF link to the newsletter on this page. http://t.co/ZTNWRFtQ
— Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (@BiovIntCIAT_eng) February 14, 2013
What’s that got to do with the price of food?
The various food price indices seem to offer a simple way to gauge the price of food. High index price means people have to pay more for food, right? And beastly speculators create price spikes, right? Up to a point, Lord Copper. I confess, I’ve been guilty of jumping to the first conclusion and of rubbishing the second. But my knowledge is third-hand at best. So I’m happy to point you to a thoughtful analysis on the always interesting Resources Research website.
Makanaka rakes over the FAO Food Price Index and the same organisation’s Agricultural Market Information System, and discovers that they paint rather different pictures. He also explains why that should be so and, more trenchantly, that because many of the components of both reports are averages of indices of yet more averages of global trade numbers, they really don’t carry much value for the vast majority of people who grow and eat food. As for speculators, while I still don’t believe they cause price spikes, I’m fascinated by this:
Why the international trade and export quotations numbers dominate is revealed, in a roundabout way, by a regular paragraph in the AMIS Market Monitor. The monthly pronouncement has this to say about investment flows (that is, money chasing foodgrain), for 2013 February: “Managed money was a significant seller of wheat, maize and soybeans as futures prices attained early January lows prior to USDA stocks report”. Pay attention to that term, ‘managed money’, which means funds run by banks and big investment agencies. “Managed money reversed its position in wheat from long (bullish) to short (bearish) but maintains long positions in maize and soybeans.” Now the confusion should clear somewhat. The index helps traders and exchanges deal better with volumes of grain (and dairy and meat and edible oil). AMIS helps them with a great deal more sophistication.
Got that? Investors think the price of wheat is coming down, while that of maize and soybeans is going up. No word on horsemeat.
Guarino talks!
Access Agriculture extends extension
Extension services are absolutely essential to take research results and transform them into practical advice that farmers can make use of. Without decent extension workers, all the shiny new science in the world has very little hope of making any difference to the lives of ordinary people working in agriculture. And yet, as we’ve often said before, extension services are often unloved and ignored in the pursuit of shiny new science. So it is really rather wonderful to be able to recognise Access Agriculture, a new entity created by Countrywise Communications and Agro-Insight “devoted to promoting effective agricultural training videos for the benefit of farmers and rural businesses”. ((Full disclosure: long ago I did some work for Countrywise Communications, and I think Phil Malone is a good bloke.))
Anyway, rather than me bleating on about what a good idea I think this is, and how I wish Access Agriculture every success, let me just urge you to visit the site and, if you can, to make use of the services offered.