- New Year Resolution No. 1: Take the mashua survey.
- New Year Resolution No. 2: Give the Food Programme a break, it can be not bad. As in the case of the recent episode featuring Irish Seed Savers and the only uniquely British veg.
- New Year Resolution No. 3: Learn to appreciate hour-plus talks by CG Centre DGs. And other publicity stunts…
- New Year Resolution No. 4: Give a damn about the next genome. Well, actually…
- New Year Resolution No. 5: Try to understand what people think may be going on with malnutrition in India. If anything.
- New Year Resolution No. 6: Marvel at new maps without fretting about how difficult to use they may be.
- New Year Resolution No. 7: Do not snigger at the British honours system.
- New Year Resolution No. 8: Disengage from the whole are-GMOs-good-or-bad? thing. It’s the wrong question, and nobody is listening anyhow.
- New Year Resolution No. 9: Ignore the next lactose tolerance evolution story. They’re all the same.
- New Year Resolution No. 10: Stop obsessing about beer. But not yet. No, not yet.
- Happy 2013!
Implementation of AnGR plan of action initiated
FAO has just announced that 13 projects, involving 30 countries, have been selected for funding as contributions to the implementation of 2007’s Global Plan of Action for Animal Genetic Resources. That’s thanks to the Governments of Germany, Norway and Switzerland, who put more than US$1 million in voluntary contributions into the appropriate FAO Trust Account, as per the Funding Strategy of the GPA. What are these projects? Well, it’s not all that easy to say. These are the directions FAO gives us:
Details of the projects are available here (scroll down to the map).
The map in question is nice enough, and clicking on the country gives you lots of information on each project, but what I really wanted was just a list, giving titles and countries. And I couldn’t find that anywhere, though maybe I just didn’t look hard enough. With just that map, interactive and all, you get a good overall idea of geographic coverage, but it’s very difficult to figure out the range of livestock species involved in the projects, or how many are single-country as opposed to multi-country initiatives, for example. A pity.
Ah, but fear not, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the list you know you wanted but FAO wouldn’t let you have, going roughly from east to west, painstakingly extracted from that ever-so-pretty map.
- Regional Project: Cook Islands, Fiji and Niue
Title: South West Pacific Animal Genetic Resources Project — Conservation of indigenous pig and chicken breeds in Fiji, Niue and Cook Islands - Country: India
Title: Documenting and supporting community-based conservation of four local breeds - Regional Project: Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
Title: BushaLive (cattle) - Regional Project: Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda
Title: Promotion of indigenous chicken for improved livelihood and income generation - Country: Mozambique
Title: Conservation of native cattle breeds of Mozambique, for their present and future use - Country: Nigeria
Title: Conserving the Muturu Breed of Cattle in South Rain Forest Zone of Nigeria - Country: Togo
Title: Phenotypic and molecular characterization of local chicken in Togo - Regional Project: Gambia, Guinea, Mali, Senegal
Title: Assessment of the impact of transhumance on the sustainable management of animal genetic resources - Regional Project: Algeria, Morocco
Title: Preservation of Beni Guil sheep breed by semen exchanges between countries - Regional Project: Argentina, Brasil, Costa Rica
Title: Enhancement of Farmers Communities through Goats Utilization and Genetic Improvement - Regional Project: Bolivia, Peru
Title: Capacity strengthening for the implementing breeding strategies for llamas in Bolivia and Peru - Country: Uruguay
Title: Caracterizacion productiva y conservacion en ovinos criollos de Uruguay - Country: Chile
Title: Estrategias de conservacion in situ para bovinos y caprinos
Funny this coming hot on the heels of the launch of FAO’s monumental new data portal.
Crowdsourcing money for Dutch heirloom pigs
Among the 2012 Arca-Deli® Awards for Prestige and Marketing Value (announced in October but only coming across my radar screen now, via Facebook), this one particularly caught my eye:
Extraordinary Pigs! 100’000 Euro raised through crowdfunding for rearing rare breed pigs in the Netherlands, producing good tasting pork and for increasing animal welfare. An innovative project which combines conservation of the old with modern methods. “Like” their Facebook page to keep up with their news or visit their website.
Alas, both seem to be exclusively in Dutch, which is a pity as I’d really like to know more about how they managed to raise all that cash.
LATER: And thanks to Twitter, here’s the secret revealed:
@AgroBioDiverse Dutch pigs: invest €100, get 3x€40 ruro pig product packet delivered (1x/year), plus day at farm. Good offer for "investors"
— TalkingNutrition (@DSMNutrition) December 20, 2012
Thanks, @dsmnutrition!
Nibbles: Invest in farmers, Invest in cassava, Invest in a writer
Nothing to see here, move along edition:
- FAO calls for “farmer-centred approach to investment for agriculture”. I.e. more money for us.
- Cornell gets US$25.2M for “Next Generation Cassava Breeding”. I.e. more money for research.
- IITA clones Cornell press-release, knocks out hyperlinks.
Nibbles: Vegetables, UK funding, Oz funding, Oz genebank, Jefferson, Hawaiian food, Markets, Tree seeds, NUS journal, Geographic targeting, ITPGRFA, Arabica and climate, Protected areas, European farmland biodiversity, Sustainable use, Ethiopian seed video
- Palestinian rooftop gardens. Including crucifers, no doubt.
- Brits support work with rice and wheat wild relatives. Among other things. They’ll probably use some of these genomics things.
- Aussies support sweet potatoes. HarvestPlus rejoices.
- That new Australian genebank. Will it have any sweet potatoes?
- The agricultural legacy of Thomas Jefferson. It doesn’t say here, but I bet he was into sweet potato.
- Hawaiian menus. What, no sweet potato?
- Forget biotech, the road to sexy agriculture is via the supermarket. Where you can buy sweet potato. Maybe even of the organic persuasion.
- Or maybe better tree seeds. Even in the Nordic countries. Or the US. Is cacao a tree?
- Plans for special edition of Sustainability on neglected crops. Like amaranth?
- Geographic targeting reaches roots/tubers. Using this newfangled atlas? Or no?
- Treaty and Consortium love-in filmed. Thanks for sharing. It’s all part of this CGIAR perestroika thing, no doubt.
- What that Kew coffee extinction paper really said.
- Protected areas need work. Especially for coffee (see above).
- Yeah but protected areas is not the only way to go, and Europe now has a bunch of biodiversity indicators for farmland. I guess it’s all part of some big plan.
- Policy brief on sustainable use of PGR. Or, as we used to call it, on farm conservation.
- Which you can kind of see happening here.