- Breeding maize for high yields limits its plasticity.
- “The rich ate fine, floured wheat bread. But if you were poor you cut your teeth on rye and black bread.”
- USA, MLS and ITPGRFA.
- Rethinking conservation. Again.
- Content-free article on growing rice in slightly salty water.
- BBC catches up with coffee rust.
- Making animal feed sustainable. Easier said than done.
The way ahead on nutrition?
While waiting for agriculture to do that transformation thing, it may be worthwhile reading the latest Global Nutrition Report. Although some metrics are moving in the wrong direction, I found some comfort in this observation:
…‘triple duty actions’ which tackle malnutrition and other development challenges could yield multiple benefits across the SDGs. For example, diversification of food production landscapes can provide multiple benefits by: ensuring the basis of a nutritious food supply essential to address undernutrition and prevent diet-related NCDs; enabling the selection of micronutrient-rich crops with ecosystem benefits; and, if the focus is on women in food production, empowering women to become innovative food value chain entrepreneurs while minimising work and time burden.
So what’s stopping us?
Agriculture hoping to transform itself, and COP23
So, the UN Climate Change Conference, otherwise known as COP23, has started here in Bonn, and we’re trying to make sure the voice of agriculture is heard, on the fringes if nowhere else. The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) is busy touting its vision for an agricultural transformation under climate change. With a bunch of partners, they’ve organized a series of side events on the different dimensions that such a transformation will entail, including, perhaps most relevant to us here, the role ofcrop breeding and improvement. All the usual social media channels are in play, so follow along, and send in your questions and harangues.
Nibbles: Halloween roots, Fred’s great potatoes, Ellis on TV, CIP genebank online, Weird potato, Weird watermelon, Paul Gepts, Caucasian sheep, Livestock hybrids, COP23
- Halloween is an agricultural thing. Basically.
- Frederick the Great had a thing for potatoes. Among other things.
- CIP genebank manager on TV. He has a thing for potatoes too. As you can tell from his new website.
- Pop quiz: Can you find this N American potato in the CIP genebank?
- The extraordinary story of the ancient Native American crookneck watermelon. Bet it goes well with S. jamesii.
- Paul Gepts gets award. No word on his thoughts on potatoes, but he does like beans.
- Transhumance lives in the Caucasus.
- What in tarnation is a zubron?
- Making the case for climate action on agriculture at COP23. And vice versa.
Another Governing Body done and dusted
Jeremy has been able to heroically deal with various housekeeping issues on the blog without interference from me for the past week or so because I’ve been in Kigali heroically dealing with the Seventh Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. As ever, Earth Negotiations Bulletin has done a great job of digesting each day’s deliberations, and then providing an overall summary. Perhaps the main outcome is a tentative move towards an at least partly subscription model for the Multilateral System. There has been interest in this from the private sector, though the exact level of contribution of course remains to be negotiated.
A great job, as I say, except for one thing. Here’s an excerpt from ENB’s final analysis of the meeting:
Veteran negotiator from the Netherlands Bert Visser, ETC Group’s Pat Mooney, famous for coining the terms “biopiracy” and “terminator seeds,” and IRRI’s bridge-builder Rory Hillocks were celebrated with standing ovations for their contribution to the Treaty and PGRFA conservation and sustainable use. Furthermore, side-events showcased a multitude of participatory programmes, community projects, and networks steadily working on agrobiodiversity conservation and sustainable use, within the Treaty framework but without the visibility they deserve. In the words of an African saying, “Many small people, in many small places, do many small things, which can alter the face of the world.” The challenge for the Treaty, as an expert summed up, is to bring them all together and let the world know.
I suspect, however, that “IRRI’s bridge-builder” is really Ruaraidh Sackville Hamilton.
LATER: Glad to see this has now been corrected.