Category: Featured

Rahul adds some diversity to the debate about the cost of breakfast:

Cornflakes, toast, jam, eggs, coffee is breakfast? A ‘newspaper’ (as The Economist likes to call itself) that boasts a global readership should know better. In most of Asia that’s not breakfast. Vegetables are, rice is, noodles are, soup is, local cereals are. Orange juice indeed.

I’ll have what he’s having.

Something slightly different. Comments continue to arrive in support of a proposal to resurrect the Plant Genetic Resources Newsletter as an online journal. Among them:

It was a very important publication.
A very helpful means to share information.
An important source of information to genebank personnel and beyond.

Things are moving along. However, we’re pretty sure further support would be welcomed, so if you haven’t already, consider leaving a comment on either the original post or Robert Koebner’s update.

After a rich commentary on a recent post on how farmers detoxify cassava, Pablo seems to be about to throw up his hands in despair, but steps back from the brink:

I begin to think that ignoring examples such as these, with lessons and clear examples that are rigorously scientific and practical is not about lack of evidence or oversight, but a policy to eliminate smallholder agriculture and the knowledge it holds. This would remove any viable alternative to the agro-industrial hegemony over our food and our diverse agrarian landscapes. I hope my fears are misplaced.

Glenn asks a good question:

Is anybody in charge of the CGIAR reform looking at this question of the mix of research between the supercrops — rice, maize and wheat — and the so-called “orphan crops”?

Which we have passed on.

William, commenting on Nabatean agriculture, raises a much more widely applicable point:

What isn’t eatable to us humans sheep and goat often find palatable.

Crucially important in considering agricultural biodiversity.