The latest GRIN-U newsletter points to a really nice series of infographics from the USDA’s Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee that I didn’t know about. But there’s a whole lot more. Explore away.
Before the flood
So, three years back, I posted about the floods in Pakistan, and how genebanks could potentially help farmers recover any crop diversity they lost because of them. But wouldn’t it be even better if the danger of flooding could be predicted? That way crop diversity from at-risk areas could be collected, if not already in genebanks, and multiplied up ready to be distributed should disaster strike.
Well, a recent paper does just that, using AI, no less: “We use our model predictions to identify historically flood-prone areas in Ethiopia and demonstrate real-time disaster response capabilities during the May 2024 floods in Kenya.”
I’ve managed to geo-reference a screen grab of the Ethiopia map provided in the paper using MapWarper, import it into Google Earth, and add the locations of sorghum landraces as reported in Genesys. Here’s what I got.
Unlike in the Pakistan example, there’s not much in the way of genebank accessions from areas of Ethiopia that are particularly at risk from flooding, it seems from this. However, Genesys does not (yet) include geographic provenance data for sorghum from the national genebank of Ethiopia. The 4000-odd sorghum accession from Ethiopia currently in Genesys are conserved at ICRISAT.
Brainfood: Defining domestication, Pig domestication, Archaeological orphan crops, Levant Neolithic causes, Altiplano agricultural origins, Irish cattle, Islamic Green Revolution, Ancient fish DNA, Ancient Chinese rice
- A universally applicable definition for domestication. Domestication is just evolution in anthropogenic environments.
- Early evidence for pig domestication (8,000 cal. BP) in the Lower Yangtze, South China. Evolution in anthropogenic environments can follow different pathways.
- Orphan crops of archaeology-based crop history research. Some crops are also neglected by archaeologists. Maybe because they weren’t domesticated enough?
- Catastrophic fires and soil degradation: possible association with the Neolithic revolution in the southern Levant. Domestication was caused by lightning.
- Altiplano agricultural origins was a process of economic resilience, not hardship: Isotope chemistry, zooarchaeology, and archaeobotany in the Titicaca Basin, 5.5-3.0 ka. Farming was not caused by anything so traumatic as lightning on the Altiplano.
- Changing human-cattle relationships in Ireland: a 6000-year isotopic perspective. Open land management of cattle in the Iron Age led to their central position in Irish culture. Maybe lightning was involved in clearing the land?
- Re-thinking the ‘Green Revolution’ in the Mediterranean world. The impact of the Islamic Green Revolution was down to more than just new crops and irrigation. Bit like the modern Green Revolution then?
- Roman Atlantic garum: DNA confirms sardine use and population continuity in north-western Iberia. You can characterize and compare old fish remains based on the DNA that survived fermentation at the bottom of ancient salting vats.
- Exploration of crop germplasm resources knowledge mining in Chinese ancient books: a route toward sustainable agriculture. You can characterize and compare old rice varieties based on the descriptions that survived in ancient chronicles. Maybe pig varieties too?
Who feeds the world anyway?
For decades, the mantra of “feeding the world” has dominated discussions about agricultural development and food security. The logic sounds straightforward: more food production equals less hunger.
Michael Grunwald, in his new book Feeding the World But Killing the Planet, acknowledges agriculture’s environmental toll but insists that industrial farming—backed by technological fixes—is necessary to meet humanity’s caloric demands. He doesn’t challenge the system, he documents ways to optimize it.
But others argue this is a dangerous simplification. In The Enduring Fantasy of “Feeding the World”, which starts by quoting Grunwald, authors from the Agroecology Research-Action Collective contend that hunger isn’t primarily about food shortages — it’s about poverty, inequality, and political exclusion. The production-first mantra, they argue, legitimizes destructive farming practices that serve elites while leaving the root causes of hunger untouched. They come up with a slogan of their own for the alternative: “a world that feeds itself.”
One camp calls for systemic change — agroecology, local food sovereignty, and policies that tackle inequality. The other seeks to refine the existing model with new technologies that deliver efficiency gains. Both see the ecological risks, but diverge on whether to reinvent or retrofit the system. 1
It occurs to me that I could fall back on my own usual ploy of observing with a self-satisfied smirk that, either way, crop diversity will be needed. But maybe it’s time to do away with catchphrases altogether. It’s more complicated, and more important, than that.
Nibbles: Impact assessment, Kenyan veggies, African veggie genebank, Madd fruit, Moroccan fruits, Date palm, DOGE at USDA
- Modelling adoption of biofortified crops is no substitute for empirical field surveys. Kind of obvious, but I guess needed saying.
- Kenyans may not need biofortified crops, though. Assuming they are actually eating their traditional vegetables.
- There’s a whole genebank for Africa’s vegetables.
- Saba senegalensis is also naturally biofortified.
- The High Atlas Foundation is also on a fruit tree mission
- Is the date palm the most important fruit tree in the world, though?
- I wonder what will happen to USDA’s fruit tree collections.