BBC News is reporting that coffee giant Starbucks has settled its dispute with the Ethiopian government over trademarks on coffee varieties. There is no direct benefit to growers in Ethiopia but the BBC says “it is hoped the deal will act as a catalyst to raise prices and improve the livelihoods of Ethiopian farmers”. It will take some time for the dust to settle and for the ramifications of the deal to become clear, but for now this looks like a reeasonably good outcome for all concerned.
Perennial wheat
Breeding perennial wheat: the search continues.
Buffett sweet potato balls
Lets get this part out of the way: search Google for “Buffett sweet potato,” having seen an announcement at Papgren, and the number 3 link is for Buffett sweet potato balls. But that’s not what I was after.
I was after details of a US$3 million grant from the Howard G. Buffett Foundation to the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center to enhance sweet potato for Africa. The project has two aims: to boost resistance to a couple of diseases — sweet potato feathery mottle virus and sweet potato chlorotic stunt virus — and to improve the nutritional content of sweet potatoes, most notably by increasing folate, iron and zinc.
Excellent. Africa needs higher yields and more nutritious diets. I don’t know what approach the Danforth will take, but as they’ve teamed up with the Monsanto company it is possible that there will be some direct manipulation of DNA involved. Again, excellent, because sweet potato is generally reproduced by taking clones — cuttings, actually, often called slips — from parent material, so farmers should be able to distribute any material they receive. But, I wonder, just how many different varieties will the project engineer? And isn’t there a risk that this effort, particularly if it is successful, will blanket Africa with a few genetically similar varieties that do not have the diversity to withstand the next disease epidemic, making that, when it comes, all the more disastrous?
Rhetorical questions, I know, and ones that I’ve asked before. The funny part is, nobody else seems to be asking them. That Google search, in news? Precisely two items, and one of those is essentially the press release. The other is kinda fun.
Where the rubber hits the road
The rubber tree comes from Brazil, but natural rubber itself mostly comes from SE Asia plantations these days. One of reasons is the leaf blight fungus, but now comes news of resistant varieties. This may herald a resurgence in climate-friendly natural rubber at the expense of the synthetic kind, which is made from oil. But will that positive effect be negated by increased cutting down of the rainforest to establish new plantations in Brazil?
Sustainable tea
Unilever, which buys 12% of the world’s tea production, wants it all certified sustainable by 2015.