Category: Climate change

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Agrobiodiversity and the food crisis

UNEP has just published The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. ((Nellemann, C., MacDevette, M., Manders, T., Eickhout, B., Svihus, B., Prins, A. G., Kaltenborn, B. P. (Eds). February 2009. The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. A UNEP rapid response assessment. United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal. ISBN: 978-82-7701-054-0)) I found out about it because its illustrations are separately available on the GRID-Arendal website and I subscribe to its feed. Which is weird, because I’d have thought UNEP would make more of this. Maybe I just missed the announcement of the launch.

Any agricultural biodiversity in it, I hear you ask. Actually, perhaps surprisingly, yes. There’s a box on “Using crop genetic diversity to combat pests and diseases in agriculture” on page 57. There’s a box on “Enhancing sustainability through the use of crop wild relatives” on page 74. And, though admittedly it doesn’t address agrobiodiversity specifically, there’s a section on increasing research investment in agriculture on page 81. I’ll take that.

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Blogging the big birthday: What would Darwin make of Climate Change

No-one escapes our appeal to celebrate Darwin’s birthday. This just in from Andy Jarvis:

Julián lost his blogging virginity just a few days ago with his post on “Is all climate change bad?.” His points are very valid. The wording in IPCC reports is that many crops become more productive with a 2 degree C temperature hike. It is only beyond that, which is expected 2050 onwards, that productivity significantly goes down on a global scale. And a lot can happen between now and then.

Given the historic day, I wondered what Darwin would make of all this? Surely he’d say that there’s nothing like a bit of selection pressure to bring about evolution. And ho boy do we need some evolution — let’s face it, the system is not working particularly well right now, and that is not limited to biology. Nothing like a crisis to bring about social change and promote innovation. So, on this day, I’d like to make a toast to selection pressure, and I hope that it stimulates changes in the fundamental system of agriculture to select against some of the bizarre, environmentally unsustainable practices and socially inequitable policies that are out there.

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Nibbles: Hell, Honours, Pollution, Darwin, Genomes, Small companies, Tigernuts, Urine soft drink, Medicinal plants

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Blogging the big birthday: One man’s selection

As the entire thinking world prepares to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, tomorrow, lots of people (ourselves including) are unable to contain themselves. One of those is R. Ford Denison, who shares a selection of Darwin quotes that he was preparing to take to a celebratory dinner. A great selection it is too, revealing Denison’s own status as a man who takes evolution in agriculture very seriously. I wouldn’t say that this was my own favourite, but it is one that I had not noted before:

Look at a plant in the midst of its range, why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some advantage over its competitors, or over the animals which prey on it.

There’s more where that came from.

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Nibbles: Bananas, Sorghum, Agave, Big vs small, Cauliflower, Wine, Chestnut, Farmers’ rights, India, Aquaculture, Medicinals, Tarpan