Commodity

Nibbles: China seeds, Dixie apples, USDA genebanks, ASU dates, IPR, IFG grapes, Pick-a-mix, Coffee ESG, French heirlooms, Belgian brewing, Tanzanian sorghum, Horse-bread, Roots & tubers, Guyana cassava, SDG indicators

China announces a slew of seed-related measures.
A slew of seeds kept apples diverse in the US South, but not so much any more.
Fortunately there’s a slew of apples, among many other things, in the USDA genebank system.
Dates too, probably, but this article is actually about the (complementary?) collection at Arizona State University.
A slew of intellectual protections has been good for seed companies. But consumers?
IFG no doubts benefits mightily from intellectual property protection of its grape varieties. The diversity of which you can peruse on this nice website.
Speaking of nice websites, this one helps farmers pick-a-mix of crops. Intercropping is diversity too.
How the coffee industry is trying to cope with a slew of sustainability rules. Yeah, sometimes IP protection is not enough.
But who owns heritage varieties?
Including heritage varieties of Belgian malting barley and other cereals.
Speaking of malting, they use sorghum in Tanzania.
It’s unclear what heritage varieties went into making horse-bread, but I’d like to taste the stuff.
But who needs bread (or beer?) anyway? There’s a slew of root and tuber crops in Africa and elsewhere just waiting to solve hunger…
…as Guyana knows well.
Wanna keep track of (most of) the above? FAO has you (sorta) covered via a slew of indicators.

Spanish-language article about the effort to save Ukraine’s genebank.
Report on “Reducing inequalities for food security and nutrition” from the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). They don’t say so explicitly, but genebanks can help with that.
They can certainly help with breeding new olive varieties, which are much needed.
Genebanks come in all shapes and sizes. Sometimes an apple orchard is also a genebank.
Sometimes rice farmers are genebanks.
I wonder how many genebanks conserve trees with edible leaves. This book doesn’t say, alas.
The Australian Grains Genebank (AGG) gets a boost. No word on whether it will start conserving edible trees.

You want agroecology? Don’t neglect labour issues.
You can’t neglect hot dry winds if you want the breed wheat for Kansas these days.
IFPRI continues to ride the latest neglected crops bandwagon, this time in Latin America.
In Africa, beer may rescue fonio from neglect.
Rescuing plants from herbarium sheets.
Rescuing herbarium sheets in Ukraine.
Breeding a safe grasspea will definitely save it from neglect.
Meanwhile, in Rome, negotiations to enhance the Plant Treaty’s multilateral system of access and benefit sharing re-start. I bet a whole bunch of neglected crops are on the agenda.

Marketing the milpa.
Marketing a traditional Cretan olive variety.
Finding lost apples in New England. Now to market them.
Taking new passion fruit varieties to market in Australia.
Deconstructing Moche history, society and culture through compost and struggle meals. No sign of markets.
Reviewing the state of agroecology in Africa. Does “economic diversification” count as marketing?
The Global Tree Knowledge Platform must have stuff on marketing somewhere.
The books series ISSUES IN AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY, now free to download, has lots on marketing.

It’s pretty rare to have a mainstream media piece on the use of crop wild relatives for climate change adaptation but here we have an example with tomato, so make the most of it. There’s an interesting wrinkle though, so more to come, time permitting.
It’s even rarer to see a mainstream media piece on genebank staff getting trained. What’s going on out there?
Not exactly mainstream media, but how many times have you seen an official government press release on its livestock censuses? Anyway, India’s last one was carried out in 2019 and covered 184 breeds of 16 species. Wonder where the data is.
Speaking of government press releases, here’s one from USDA announcing that it has joined a coffee breeding network. Well, I for one think it’s important.
And staying in the USA, you know how you read in mainstream textbooks that Native Americans got horses from retreating Spanish colonists after the Pueblo Revolt? And you know how Native Americans have been saying that’s not what they think happened? How rare is it that a scientific paper involving Indigenous authors overturns a mainstream historical narrative and is splashed all over the mainstream media? Very rare, that’s how rare.