Earth, Wind and Water‘s Tai Haku alerts us to the fact that the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University is upping its web presence. A new website is growing. There will be a blog, apparently, although the RSS feed doesn’t seem to work yet. There’s a Facebook page. Tai Haku says there’s a Twitter stream too, but I wasn’t able to find it.
Nibbles: Apples, Mango, Atlas, Cheese
- NY Times touts heirloom apple book.
- Coca Cola to help Haitian mango farmers.
- Nature Conservancy launches online Atlas of Global Conservation. No agriculture, natch.
- Promoting Mediterranean cheese.
Research on Ethiopian food insecurity not very joined up?
The Drylands Coordination Group (DCG) is a network for capacity building through exchange of practical experience and appropriate knowledge on food security in the drylands of Africa.
And a huge amount of very detailed research they are doing too, in Mali, Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia. But one does have to wonder how much “exchange of practical experience” is really taking place. Take two reasonably recent reports from Ethiopia.
One, entitled “The Levels, Determinants and Coping Mechanisms of Food Insecure Households in Southern Ethiopia” (published Feb. 2009) makes no mention of diversity within crops at all. In fact, it even conflates crops, by measuring household economic status as the “average amount of wheat per person (all household production converted into wheat term).” Surely it makes a difference to the “levels, determinants and coping mechanisms of food insecure households” whether they are producing only one variety of wheat, several varieties of wheat, or both wheat and other cereals.
Compare that with another DCG study, entitled “Seed system impact on farmers’ income and crop biodiversity in the drylands of southern Tigray” (published Jan. 2009). This goes into great detail on the different varieties of each of the cereal crops in the study area.
Surely the two teams could have talked?
Online forum on agrobiodiversity for nutrition
I’m not sure if we made a big enough deal of our friend Danny’s new venture, a Yahoo Group on Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition:
Currently we live in a world where a growing number of people suffer the consequences of a lack of vital nutrients due to dietary simplification and neglect of more nutritious options. This list is run by a small group of people associated with the UNEP/GEF supported “Mainstreaming Biodiversity for Food and Nutrition” project who are dedicated to reversing this situation. The list is specifically designed to bring people together who have a common interest in the use of biodiversity, wild and cultivated, for improving nutrition, health and wellbeing.
The latest post looks at a paper on fortification:
This paper was shared by a colleague and may be of interest to some. Although it deals with fortified blended foods and in emergency or food aid situations targetting largely children it does raise a few very important issues relevant to agrobiodiverse food and diets and nutrition and health. Most importantly, it highlights the general lack of evidence for the efficacy and effectiveness of the interventions described in the paper for improving nutritional and health outcomes and just how few interventions plan for undertaking such impact studies. Further, it demonstrates how complex a challenge it is to try and demonstrate such linkages between food intervention and nutrition and health outcomes.
Well worth joining.
Nibbles: Rice conservation and use, Tunisian genebank, Buno, Popcorn, Sustainability, Brazilian social networking, Strawberry breeding, Sunflower genomics, Climate change and fisheries
- Lots of Indian rice in the IRRI genebank. Any of it being used to develop drought-tolerant varieties?
- Lots of journalists in the Tunisian genebank.
- How they make coffee in Ethiopia.
- How they make popcorn the world over. You sometimes get popcorn (or popped sorghum) with coffee in Ethiopia, now I think of it. And since we’re on an Ethiopian kick, fancy some enjera? Gary Nabhan did.
- “Productivity vs. sustainability is a ‘false choice.’” Well I never. And probably not news to these people either, or these. But to these guys?
- A Twitter roundup from Embrapa.
- Ugly hybrid of two wild strawberries may cause allergies.
- Explanation of evolution of doubled genes in wild and cultivated sunflowers certainly causes pain in brain.
- Some good climate change news for the Atlantic croaker. Being a glass-totally-empty kinda guy I predict it tastes like shit.