Funding

May 10, 2011May 10, 2011

Small farmers are the answer

This may not be quite what Bill Gates had in mind when he announced that he was crowdsourcing ideas for a speech he has to give on 24 May.

SmallFarmers

But the competition is real enough. So hop on over to the BMGF blog, read all about it, and share your ideas with the brightest and the best. And us, if you’re so minded. And if the terms allow.

April 14, 2011April 14, 2011

Nibbles: SEARICE, R&D, Sustainable intensification, Biofortification, Chillies, Safe movement, Mangoes, Weeds, Berries, Blueberries, Cerrado

SEARICE explains its approach to seed sovereignty and farmer participation.
Nature on IFPRI’s report on agricultural R&D in Africa. Not pretty.
Resilience Science on the UN Special Rapporteur’s sustainable intensification thing.
The Gates Foundation is on a nutritional roll; most of yesterday’s posts are available from this round-up.
New Mexico gets all protectionist about its chillies.
IITA explains how it provides healthy germplasm. Various different interesting stories in there, stick with it.
Farmer conservation power in India.
How to control invasive species. Eat more weeds.
Presentation on Trends in global nutrition and health: Local fruits and their potential importance for nutrition and health as seen at Pavlovsk berry meeting.
Speaking of berries…
The cerrado (and its crop wild relatives) is in trouble. We talked about this, weren’t you paying attention?

March 31, 2011March 31, 2011

Nibbles: Gardening, Seed Swap, Mapping, Animal Genebank, Rice, Seed Treay, Nanocellulose, Camels, Bread, food Security

Gardening is good for you. It’s official. And they didn’t even measure nutrition.
European seed swap in Brussels.
More fun for mappers; Training Kit on Participatory Spatial Information Management and Communication. h/t CAPRi
Australian animal genebank under threat.
Filipinos ♥ IRRI.
Big write up of Seed Treaty‘s recent Governing Body meeting in Bali.
Wired magazine goes nuts for bananas and other fruits as sources of better plastics.
Camelicious! The worlds first large-scale camel dairy farm.
Food strikes in ancient Egypt. They’ve been revolting for more than 3000 years.
Nice round-up of how indigenous communities in Colombia are protecting their food security.

February 18, 2011February 17, 2011

Mr El-Sayed Mohamed El-Azazi, Executive Director of the Egyptian Deserts Gene Bank, has posted a comment to one of our previous posts about the looting of his genebank. It includes a link the following presentation on what the place looked like before the fateful day. The call has gone out for help replacing lost equipment. One can only hope it will be heeded.