Category: Featured

Detoxifying cassava prompts Ford to ask interesting questions:

I knew about the value of cyanide to deter theft and pests and have also read that it’s a useful pool of nitrogen for the root, but reducing “the social obligation to share” is interesting. As I recall, “Famine in Peasant Societies” puts part of the blame for famines on the expectation that anyone who gets a little ahead will share with relatives, rather than investing in irrigation equipment or whatever. Bank accounts, even if they don’t pay interest, offer a way to hide resources from relatives so, the book claims, famines became less likely. Still, do the risks of sharing outweigh the benefits? Or is there some optimum level of sharing?

One for the game theorists?

Matt welcomes the new word on cassava domestication:

Wow, thanks for that post! I never would have guessed bitterness would be important. It’s a good reminder for all of us not to get too ahead of ourselves in “fixing” other peoples ag problems.

André has a bone to pick with the non-circumspect quoting of numbers too:

If the celebration of the Year of Biodiversity is a celebration and mourning of past century(ies), of course idyllic, agriculture and an occasion to bicker against modern agriculture – with little consideration for the challenges ahead, particularly in terms of conservation of agro-biodiversity – then it will have been a formidable failure. I am afraid, we already know the answer.

Andrew has a question for the U. of Warwick, and will be writing a strongly worded letter to Britain’s new Prime Minister if he doesn’t get the right answer:

Is the Genetic Resources Unit to be rehoused under the Department of Life Sciences in a new state of the art facility to increase storage capacity to meet the increasing demand to ex situ conserved plant genetic resources (crops, landraces, wild crop relatives) or are seeds and germplasm to be dumped in the department’s basement with little care for its socio-economic and money making value with the addition to jobs being axed in a research area, which struggles to find adequate funding?

Susan MacMillan adds more arrows to the quiver of dietary diversification:

Let’s not forget another important if traditional weapon in our arsenal — animal agriculture, which provides poor households with modest quantities of milk and meat, which help human bodies make better use of the staples they consume, as well as help farmers not only make regular incomes but also make more efficient, sustainable and productive use of their croplands and farming systems. Indeed, the oldest staple of all may be not grains but diversification itself.