Climate change

Nibbles: Drought, Olympic nutrition, GMO potatoes, Einkorn beer, Fast food, Coffee inputs

More US drought data and some insights into the drought’s impact: it’s affecting the Black Sea region too.
Another reason to improve childhood nutrition – it improves Olympic medal prospects.
Grist gets stuck into the GMO potatoes debate. It’s about diversity, Dummie. Not that anyone cares.
Brewing stone age beer. “The minor details make beer brewing exciting.” I’ll bet.
The long, straight dope on a food industrialist’s approach to better fast food.
Diversifying inputs increases Rwandan coffee farmers’ profits.

The Colbert Report
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Watch this for two reasons:

It explains briefly and in an easy-to-understand way just some of the ramifications of the drought in the US. Note that the downside is almost all the result of using corn as feed for intensive livestock production.
It is a masterclass on how to communicate simply and directly.

Major kudos to Bruce Babcock.

You’ve heard of alternative lifestyles? Now read all about alternative pollinators.
Why should we spend money digitizing natural history collections?
Not all quinoa cultivars may be good for celiacs.
The largest comparative growth experiment ever. Hope some of the 600+ species are crop wild relatives.
Mangroves trap heavy metals. And sequester a lot of carbon. But they are moving. Thank goodness there’s lots of ways to value the services they provide.
CABI’s Plantwise Knowledge Bank is online.
Kew boffins blow up coffee. The genus, settle down.

Climate Adaptation Country Profiles from the World Bank. Better than you might think.
You don’t need the whole genome, apparently. Now they tell us.
Where the global food industry is going. Some opportunities there if you think agrodiversity is important, Shirley.
Wait, there’s a 6-day international event on gelato?

You say potatoes, I say tomatoes; either way, the blight gonna get them. LATER: Ok, there was a second link to Rodale.com from “tomatoes”, but that seems to have disappeared, and here’s the story on that, thanks to Jesse.
A huge haul of links to current articles about the drought in the US, and much else besides.
And a smattering of ideas that farmers could adopt to improve production and conservation, in the US and perhaps elsewhere too.
Speaking of which, goodish – or not-so-bad – news on food prices.
Longhorn cattle: a selection of good-looking pictures. ILRI to flood Flickr with African longhorns?
Good-looking beans find favour with Ugandan farmers.
UK curry eaters looking forward to climate change, the fools.