Nibbles: Crop failure, Transformation, Malta genebank, Virginia fruits, Nigeria genebank, Bean breeding, Peasants’ rights

  1. Multiple simultaneous crop failures are going to get more common.
  2. All the more reason to transform food system, right?
  3. Which means funding genebanks properly, even on Malta.
  4. And saving what can still be saved. Like fruit trees in the US, yes, why not?
  5. But you have to know what to do with all that stuff in genebanks. Nigeria is showing a way to do that.
  6. One thing you can do is breed beans which take less time to cook. Win-win.
  7. While doing all that, let’s not forget peasants’ rights.

Brainfood: Private finance, Public finance, Land sparing, Land sharing, Trade-offs, Ecological intensification, Metaverse, Crop failure

Nibbles: Agroecology, Wheat breeding, NUS in LA, Fonio beer, Herbarium seeds, Ukraine herbarium, Grasspea breeding, Plant Treaty

  1. You want agroecology? Don’t neglect labour issues.
  2. You can’t neglect hot dry winds if you want the breed wheat for Kansas these days.
  3. IFPRI continues to ride the latest neglected crops bandwagon, this time in Latin America.
  4. In Africa, beer may rescue fonio from neglect.
  5. Rescuing plants from herbarium sheets.
  6. Rescuing herbarium sheets in Ukraine.
  7. Breeding a safe grasspea will definitely save it from neglect.
  8. Meanwhile, in Rome, negotiations to enhance the Plant Treaty’s multilateral system of access and benefit sharing re-start. I bet a whole bunch of neglected crops are on the agenda.

Brainfood: PGRFA prioritization, Endangerment value, Geo-genetic visualization tool, USDA quinoa collection, Wild sesame conservation, USDA genebanks & climate change, Clover genetic changes, Collecting Comoros cassava, Sunflower breeding history, Durum breeding, Rice genebank tools

Genebanks for today AND tomorrow

Genebanks have a communication problem: they are a do-something-for-tomorrow thing in a something-must-be-done-now world. Well, it turns out that some important people are increasingly seeing these two seemingly quite different ways of prioritizing as not necessarily mutually exclusive. This is from last week’s The Economist:

In a recent article, a number of world leaders including Joe Biden of America, William Ruto of Kenya and Muhammad bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates wrote that they were convinced “poverty reduction and protection of the planet are converging objectives”. Some policies do indeed provide useful fixes for both. Sustainable agriculture cuts emissions, climate-proofs the food supply and reduces the risk of famine…

Now to convince Messrs Biden, Ruto et al. of the connection between sustainable agriculture and crop diversity…

LATER: Maybe add the Chinese authorities to that list?