Commodity

May 1, 2014March 5, 2026

Ecuador puts its money where its chocolate is

Tweets emerging from the workshop on Climate Change and the Cocoa Industry: Leveraging Science and Technology for Sustainability at the Belfer Center last night suggest that there’s something of a revolution brewing in cacao research:

#Ecuador to create world's first #cocoa and #chocolate university http://t.co/fUiNXbAFoU http://t.co/lwMp74Kewh

— Calestous Juma (@calestous) April 30, 2014

Theobroma, wild and cultivated, has played and important part in the country’s history and economic development. And the diversity of the crop has been said to be threatened, despite largish collections. So it probably does make financial sense to invest in cacao research. The devil will be in the details. One to watch.

April 26, 2014April 26, 2014

Nibbles: City farming, Yeast diversity, Fungal taxonomy, Ankole cattle, Fruit breeding, Goat improvement, Private hunger, Vietnam cacao, Sequencing life, Old vegetables, Cola politics, Lugar Center, Wither biofuels, Plant breeder award, Amateur potato breeding

“Fifteen to twenty percent of the world’s food is produced through urban farming, involving an estimated 800 million people.”
We shaped yeasts as much as they shaped us. Now to sort out their nomenclature, along with the rest of the benighted fungal kingdom.
Cheese is just one way yeasts shaped us. What kind of cheese can you make from Ankole milk, I wonder.
Sean Myles tells us how his lab “makes food better.”
Tan Sonstegard of USDA tells us how ADAPTMap can make goats better. Skip to 2 mins in, if you want to avoid adorable footage of cute (human) kids. I love a nice bit of goat cheese.
Can the private sector help combat hunger and malnutrition? Gee, I dunno, do tell me.
Vietnamese chocolate comes of age. Someone mention the private sector?
Gene jockeys take over world. World surrenders.
What did the Elizabethans ever do for us? Well, they grew funky vegetables for one thing.
Both Colas sign up to FAO guidelines that “protect the rights of poor and vulnerable people to land, livelihoods and food security.” But is it all marketing?
The Lugar Center has a bunch of bibliographic resources for researchers.
Biofuels? Bah, humbug.
Jorge Dubcovsky, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California–Davis, snags another award.
“Are you all converts to the cause of backyard potato breeding?” Do tell. And so we come full circle.

April 19, 2014March 5, 2026

Nibbles: Mainstream MAS, ICRISAT breeding, History of hunger, Specialty crops, Biofortification, Collectivizing smallholders, Fake seeds, Good seeds, Maize diversity, Making palm oil, Space ag, Cacao and CC, Cassava and CC, Cherry phenology, CC adaptation, Flavour gene, Indian apples, GBIF data, EU force feeding petition, BRITE, Sir Hans Sloane, Silk Road, Banana realism

Round-up of stuff that’s been accumulating over past few days because we were busy putting food on the table.
Marker assisted selection of tomatoes makes it to Washington Post. When will African crops do the same?
“The history of humanity is a history of hunger.” Maybe MAS of African crops will help.
USDA money for minor crops. Including African crops?
Nigerian minister of agriculture on biofortification. Of African crops.
African smallholders need to get together. They have nothing to lose but their chains. And their fake seeds. Which is not a problem for their Central American brethren.
Someone mention Central America? Listen to a talk on maize diversity therein. And at the other end of the region’s diversity spectrum: oil palm.
NASA wants to grown stuff in space. Organically, of course. African smallholders nonplussed.
In space, nobody can hear you riot over food prices.
Saving cacao from climate change: The colloquium. We’ve had cassava. Cherries next?
Hold everything: there’s a framework for this business of crop diversity and climate change.
Deconstructing strawberry flavour. Apples next? Not sure Indian farmers will care much.
GBIF wants you to tell them how your data should be licensed. And some background.
You can lobby the EU on fois gras. If that’s your thing.
If you’re in Vancouver on May 6, you can celebrate five years of the Biodiversity Research: Integrative Training and Education (BRITE) Internship Program.
You can also intern at Globefish, which links global fish-trade information networks comprising 85 countries.
Great Great Lives podcast on Sir Hans Sloane, whose connections with agricultural biodiversity are multiple.
Something else whose connections with agrobiodiversity are many, though this could have been highlighted more in the article in question: the Silk Road.
What’s the late Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s connection to crop diversity?

March 30, 2014March 5, 2026

Nibbles: Globalized diets edition

Another one of those fun photoessays on diets around the world. Don’t look too globalized to me.
Sometimes it’s not such a bad idea for a food to quietly slip away. Take kimchi. Please. The upside of globalization?
Indian street food is totally immune to globalization, far as I can tell.
Speaking of globalization, the rise in meat consumption in China is having an effect all over. But the answers are out there… Though some are cooler than others.
Want to document globalization? You’ll need this incredible resource on the history of the trade in commodities.
If we all ever eat more seaweed, Zanzibar will make a killing.
Kew in trouble? One of the great engines of globalization of plant commodities, of course. Surely too big to fail.
The health effects of diet globalization, you ask? Biofortification conference gearing up in Kigali. Will they listen to alternatives? Any of our readers going, and willing to tell us?
Is kale making a comeback? Great picture of leaf variation. Among other things.
I think all these drones could be used to map all those minor, neglected crops, don’t you?

March 24, 2014

Who pays for banana research?

A little squib in The Economist a week ago caught my eye.

The banana world was split over the merits of a merger between Chiquita and Fyffes that will create the fruit’s biggest distributor. Antitrust regulators will look closely at the deal, especially in Europe, which imposed stiff tariffs on Latin American bananas until 2012. But some say a merger makes sense, given the current squeeze in profit margins as a result of the costs of tackling potentially disastrous diseases in banana crops.

There’s a graph too, of banana exports by country. But that’s besides the point. The point, as I see it, is in that final sentence. I’d love to know how much Fyffes and Chiquita (and Dole and Uncle Tom Cobley and all) are contributing to research to combat the spread of Tropical Race 4 of Fusarium wilt. Indeed, some would say that the industry is the problem.