- Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement. Go flexitarian.
- Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. Go flexitarian?
- Periodic Table of Food Initiative for generating biomolecular knowledge of edible biodiversity. Unclear if flexitarians have the best molecules.
- Environmentally protective diets may come with trade-offs for micronutrient adequacy. More sustainable may mean less nutritious. Flexitarians unavailable for comment.
- Market engagement, crop diversity, dietary diversity, and food security: evidence from small-scale agricultural households in Uganda. Market access and crop diversification are both good for dietary diversity and food security. The ultimate flexitarianism.
- Sustainability of one-time seed distributions: a long-term follow-up of vegetable seed kits in Tanzania. Now watch flexitarians demand an even playing field.
- Developing holistic assessments of food and agricultural systems: A meta‑framework for metrics users. One framework to rule all of the above.
Giving a fig
Jeremy’s latest newsletter is out, with a medium-deep dive on a deep dive on figs. There’s more on FIGGEN here. And FYI, Genesys shows about 1500 fig accessions in genebanks.
AramcoWorld is a glossy publication from the Saudi oil giant that covers all sorts of topics generally linked to the Muslim world. In the latest issue a deep dive into fig diversity. For the scientifically inclined, FIGGEN is a cooperative effort to collect figs wild and cultivated and decode links between DNA and desirable qualities. The heart of the story, however, is the Tunisian farmers working to keep ahead of the climate emergency by changing the varieties they grow and the ways they grow them.
Read it, and you too will be able to speak knowledgeably about caprification, and if you can find an etymology beyond something like goat figs, do let me know.
Nibbles: Arboreta, IPES-Food, CGN, China genebank, Banana diversity, British hops, Coffee & deforestation
- Arboreta have a community. And a newsletter. And a paper.
- IPES-Food has a new website.
- The Dutch genebank describes its users.
- China has a back-up genebank.
- Dan Saladino has a new article out, and it’s bananas.
- The Brits freak out about their beer. As usual. And with limited justification.
- The EU gets tough on coffee.
An award for conserving seeds
Did you have to develop new methods to clean the seed? Is it one of the longest cleaning or dormancy breaking processes? Was it the first time your species was germinated in a collection and unique germination methods had to be found?
The catch is that the “you” has to be a botanic garden, but I do like the idea of the Global Seed Conservation Challenge Awards. The above is just one of six different categories. A few more days only for nominations, so get cracking.
Nibbles: VACS, FAO forgotten foods, African roots, Hopi corn, Adivasis rice, Sustainable farming, Llama history, Vicuña sweaters, Portuguese cattle, Mexico genebank, NZ genebank, Bat pollination, Eat This Newsletter, WEF
- More on the US push for opportunity crops.
- Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO.
- Many of them are roots and tubers.
- For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop.
- For the Adivasis, it’s rice.
- And more along the same lines from Odisha.
- Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages.
- …and still are, for some.
- Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed.
- I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities.
- And New Zealand’s too.
- Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, among other things.
- And the best way to frame all of the above is that the World Economic Forum wants governments to ban people from growing their own food because that causes climate change.