- 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.
Nibbles: Crop failure, Transformation, Malta genebank, Virginia fruits, Nigeria genebank, Bean breeding, Peasants’ rights
- Multiple simultaneous crop failures are going to get more common.
- All the more reason to transform food system, right?
- Which means funding genebanks properly, even on Malta.
- And saving what can still be saved. Like fruit trees in the US, yes, why not?
- But you have to know what to do with all that stuff in genebanks. Nigeria is showing a way to do that.
- One thing you can do is breed beans which take less time to cook. Win-win.
- While doing all that, let’s not forget peasants’ rights.
Brainfood: Private finance, Public finance, Land sparing, Land sharing, Trade-offs, Ecological intensification, Metaverse, Crop failure
- Finance for food systems transformation. “Financial institutions with significant portfolio exposure to the agrifood sector” need to step up.
- Heavy reliance on private finance alone will not deliver conservation goals. We can’t trust financial institutions with significant portfolio exposure to the agrifood sector.
- Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss. Spare the land for biodiversity, don’t share it. Financial institutions with significant portfolio exposure to the agrifood sector would probably agree. But that’s ok.
- Scientific evidence showing the impacts of nature restoration actions on food productivity. Land sharing isn’t all that bad actually.
- Biodiversity and pollination benefits trade off against profit in an intensive farming system. Land sharing needs financial incentives. Here we go again.
- Ecological intensification of agriculture through biodiversity management: introduction. Yeah but that’s only one example. Check out these 5 reviews and then let’s talk about financial incentives.
- The Meta-universe Platform Roblox for the Conservation of the Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS): The Case of the Floating Garden Agricultural Practices. Can they charge for it though?
- Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections. Meanwhile, the world burns…
Brainfood: Croplands, Satellite phenotyping, Farm size, Bt double, Scaling up, Opinion leaders, Gendered knowledge, OFSP, Ethiopia sorghum diversity, Banana bunchy top, Climate change & pathogens, Bean pathogens, Mixtures, Rewards
- CROPGRIDS: A global geo-referenced dataset of 173 crops circa 2020. It’s great to finally know where crops are grown. Thanks, satellites!
- Satellite imagery for high-throughput phenotyping in breeding plots. Ok, so now we could theoretically also say where landraces are grown around the world? Thanks, satellites!
- Likely decline in the number of farms globally by the middle of the century. Wait, you have to model this, you can’t figure it out from space? Thanks, satellites.
- Just agricultural science: The green revolution, biotechnologies, and marginalized farmers in Africa. Looks like you can’t predict the success of pest resistant Bt cowpea in Burkina Faso from space.
- Dried up Bt cotton narratives: climate, debt and distressed livelihoods in semi-arid smallholder India. Likewise Bt cotton in India. In both cases, fancy technology is not enough.
- Scaling Up Pro-Poor Agrobiodiversity Interventions as a Development Option. Turns out it’s not just a matter of transferring technology, satellite or otherwise. If only they had had this analytical framework when they thought of Bt crops.
- Male and stale? Questioning the role of “opinion leaders” in agricultural programs. Yes indeed, upscaling needs changes in behaviours and attitudes, and for that you need those social networks, but “key farmers” are overrated as drivers of change.
- Gendered Knowledge, Conservation Priorities and Actions: A Case Study of On-Farm Conservation of Small Millets Among Malayalar of Kolli Hills, South India. And here’s another example, if more were needed.
- Assessment of seed system interventions for biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) in Malawi. Not clear if this is another example, but I suspect it is. Can you tell OFSP from space?
- Inventory of on-farm sorghum landrace diversity and climate adaptation in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: implications for sorghum breeding and conservation. No opinion leaders nor satellites were used in this work.
- Banana bunchy top disease in Africa: Predicting continent-wide disease risks by combining survey data and expert knowledge. Both opinion leaders and satellites were used in this work. Well, not really but I couldn’t resist it.
- Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security and paths forward. Doesn’t cover banana bunchy top but I’m sure the main conclusion that better modelling and monitoring are needed applies. Using satellites, no doubt.
- Understanding farmer knowledge and site factors in relation to soil-borne pests and pathogens to support agroecological intensification of smallholder bean production systems. Sure, better modelling and monitoring are great, but in the end you have to bring it down to earth.
- Crop Diversity Experiment: towards a mechanistic understanding of the benefits of species diversity in annual crop systems. Diversification of arable crop systems through mixtures need not be bad for yields. I wonder if you can see crop mixtures from space.
- Bending the curve of biodiversity loss requires rewarding farmers economically for conservation management. This does not cover crop biodiversity, but I guess the above does, to a degree. If there were money on the table, you probably wouldn’t need social networks, let alone opinion leaders.
Nibbles: Singapore genebank, Tianjin genebank, Food system transformation, ENCORE biodiversity tool, Italian olive troubles, Agroecology map, Indian millets
- Nice write-up of the Singapore Botanic Gardens Seed Bank, which opened back in 2019 to not much fanfare.
- The Tianjin Agricultural Germplasm Resources Bank has just opened, to much fanfare.
- The Global Alliance for the Future of Food has a report out on Beacons of Hope: Stories of Food Systems Transformation During COVID-19. All far downstream from genebanks, but crop diversity makes an appearance in the form of Rwanda’s Gardens for Health International, for example.
- The ENCORE tool, created by Natural Capital Finance Alliance and UNEP-WCMC, can help assess any potential risks to natural capital which may be caused by planned investments by financial institutions. Well, now there’s a biodiversity module. Where’s the agrobiodiversity module though?
- Speaking of natural capital, Italy’s olive harvest is threatened by more than that nasty Xylella disease.
- Is agroecology an answer to all the gloom and doom? I don’t know, but here’s a map of the experiences of people who think so.
- India definitely thinks millets are an answer.