Author: Luigi Guarino

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Striga beater awarded 2009 World Food Prize

Dr Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University has won this year’s World Food Prize for his work on sorghum breeding, in particular breeding for resistance to the parasitic weed Striga.

Dr. Ejeta’s scientific breakthroughs in breeding drought-tolerant and Striga-resistant sorghum have been combined with his persistent efforts to foster economic development and the empowerment of subsistence farmers through the creation of agricultural enterprises in rural Africa. He has led his colleagues in working with national and local authorities and nongovernmental agencies so that smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs can catalyze efforts to improve crop productivity, strengthen nutritional security, increase the value of agricultural products, and boost the profitability of agricultural enterprise — thus fostering profound impacts on lives and livelihoods on broader scale across the African continent.

Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person either. Congratulations, Dr Ejeta.

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Talking turkey data

So I was playing around with the agriculture data on WRI’s EarthTrends the other day. Actually it’s mainly — though not entirely — data from FAOStat, and there are the usual provisos about the methodology. 1 But look at what has been happening to turkey numbers in developed countries lately.

turkey

Numbers doubled between 2003 and 2004! Is that real? If so, what’s been driving the trend?

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DIVERSEEDS puts out DVD

DIVERSEEDS is a scientific project supported fully by the European Commission´s 6th framework programme. We are “Networking on conservation and use of plant genetic resources in Europe and Asia.”

And I think we may have mentioned them before. Anyway, the latest news from the network is that they have a DVD out:

This documentary shows why biodiversity is important for agriculture and how it is conserved and used in many different locations in Europe and Asia.

The DVD costs about US$40, but you can get a discount if you order five or more. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you much more about it. But the contents seems to consist of a series of fifteen or so short (average 3 minutes) films on a wide variety of agrobiodiversity conservation and use initiatives, ranging from the Austrian NGO Arche Noah, to the Thai genebank, to crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent, to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. I’ll try to get hold of a copy and report.