Category: Funding

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Excellent acronym

From a press release:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced a nearly $50 million partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support innovative, solutions to critical agricultural challenges in developing countries. Each organization will provide $24 million over five years to support a competitive awards program for science research projects that address drought, pests, disease and other serious problems facing small farmers and their families who rely on their crops for their food and income.

The award program will be called BREAD–Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development–and will support a competitive award program for science research projects that develop innovative approaches and technologies to boost agricultural productivity in developing countries.

I wonder whether agricultural biodiversity will get a look in, or will all the innovation be of the silver bullet sort?

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Zoos in trouble

The financial mess is wreaking havoc with the funding of zoos in the US. Conservation of globally important fauna, you say?

When you’re the mayor of Philadelphia or governor of New York or Minnesota House minority leader, and you’re trying to keep libraries open and children insured and state troopers paid, the preservation of, say, South African’s Humboldt penguin can seem a little less pressing.

Entertainment and education?

…the first is a no-brainer for financial paring, and the second has already been pruned through the elimination of after-school programs and cuts to state college budgets, among others. In this way, the multiple purposes of zoos — a trifecta once highly valued — have today made the institutions a target on government balance sheets.

Are botanical gardens in the same boat? And are genebanks next?

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Nibbles: Conference, Funding, Borlaug, Bananas, Indian genebanks, Cassava cooking, Bees, Beer

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The Bioscience Behind Secure Harvests ignores conservation

The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) invests £78m (€80m) in plant and crop research at universities and institutes across the UK, sometimes in the form of international partnerships. They have a pamphlet out called The Bioscience Behind Secure Harvests, highlighting “key BBSRC-supported research into achieving global food security.” There’s a lot on breeding, in particular as a way of adapting to climate change, and a section on “Harnessing natural diversity.” ((Actually that turns out to be mainly about Arabidopsis.)) There are even a couple of — albeit brief — references to the use of wild relatives in wheat breeding. But nothing at all on the conservation side of things. I guess the BBSRC figures that funding the long-term availability of the raw materials of all this breeding it is supporting is someone else’s problem.

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Aid Tree Aid

A BBC story alerted me yesterday to the existence of Tree Aid:

TREE AID was established as a charity in 1987 by a group of foresters in response to the famine in Africa, brought to public attention by Band Aid and Live Aid.

They wanted to provide a long term solution once the emergency relief efforts ended. They believed that trees could significantly reduce the vulnerability of communities in rural Africa’s drylands to drought and famine in the future.

Our current strategy expands on the original concept, focusing on forest management and income, food and medicines from trees.

I like their Cake Taste initiative, and their Tree of the Month feature. Seems very worthy. And it’s easy to donate online, should you feel so inclined.