- Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
- Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
- All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
- The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
- State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
- More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
- Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
- Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
- NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.
UK genebank still threatened
Perhaps because a general election in the United Kingdom is days away, the debate over the future of HRI Wellesbourne, which we noted here almost six months ago, is beginning to be heard above the din. ((And thanks to Colin Tudge for making it audible to me.)) HRI (Horticulture Research International) is one of the last surviving bits of UK horticultural research. It also houses the Genetic Resources Unit, the UK’s primary vegetable genebank. Warwick University, which owns and operates HRI, has plans to merge it with a Life Sciences division, possibly using the land more profitably to build a housing estate.
Much of the discussion is about the loss of jobs, the loss of expertise, the loss of competitiveness and so on. These are hugely important topics, on which I don’t feel qualified to comment. Then there is the apparent duplicity and callousness of management at Warwick University, which does have a reputation for its strength in “business”. On balance, though, it does seem to be just a bit short-sighted for governments to promote food security, exhort people to eat more nutritious food, and then stand by while one of the few places still able to deliver both is closed.
Personally, I’m not optimistic. Warwick prices everything, values nothing, and acts accordingly. But more idealistic people than me are beginning to stir.
Charlie Clutterbuck, who among his many other talents runs a successful website on sustainable food, has devoted several pages there to information about Wellesbourne, including links to a Petition and a Google Group, that is a huge repository of information.
It would be premature to judge either the election or what the winners will do about HRI. Horticulture Week, a trade paper, asked the key political contenders whether they would intervene to prevent the loss, and if so how. None of the replies is particularly edifying, but that’s hardly surprising. ((It’s the second question on the page.)) Governments of all stripes talk about the need for research to enhance food security, and some of HRI’s science may yet find a new home. However it currently looks as if the foundations of breeding, the genebank and the agricultural biodiversity it contains, are being allowed to decay. Maybe Luigi’s right.
Let it close, I say. Just transfer the contents to some place where its long term conservation and availability is guaranteed, then let it close.
All the politicos would have to do then would be to support long-term conservation somewhere else and take advantage of shared access to enjoy the benefits of someone else’s efforts.
Nibbles: CIAT, Apples, Poverty, Protected areas, Honey, Juniper, Irish oak
- Learn about CIAT’s reseach via the posters they put on slideshare. Couple on their beans and cassava genebank.
- Trying to speed up apple breeding.
- Biodiversity interventions find it difficult to fight poverty. How about agrobiodiversity interventions?
- More bad news: protected areas don’t work anyway. At least for trees in Burkina Faso.
- Boffins trying to spot contraband honey. There’s contraband honey?
- Gin drinkers told to start worrying.
- Forest of Belfast project to wind up, but not before finding really old oak.
Trouble in St Petersburg
Russian Ministry of Economic Development adopts resolutions destroying the European largest field genebank and replacing it with commercial cottages.
That’s quite a title. It refers to the Vavilov Institute’s Pavlovsk Experiment Station.
The Station was organised in 1926 near St. Petersburg. Being one of the major stations of VIR, it studies perennial grasses and cruciferous tubers cultivated in the Non-Black-Soil area. There are over 3000 accessions of fruit and berry plants maintained in vivo in its gardens. More than 40 of these fruit samples have been commercialized. This station operates an experiment farm, a quarantine nursery and greenhouses.
The article itself piles on the pain. The staff are doing what they can. Strongly worded letters have apparently been written:
The administration of the Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) and the staff of Pavlovsk Experiment Station have forwarded open letters to the President of the Russian Federation D.A. Medvedev and the Prime Minister V.V. Putin seeking their support in shielding the world’s heritage against irresponsible acts of certain Russian functionaries.
Our feelers are out. We’ll keep you posted.
Nibbles: Microlivestock, Urban ag, Ag info, School meals in Peru, Agrobiodiversity indicators, Nature special supplement, Extension, Breeding organic, Forgetting fish in China, Deforestation, Russian potatoes, Fijian traditional knowledge, Megaprogrammes
- FAO slideshow on Egyptian rabbits.
- Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development calls for papers on urban agriculture. Will some look at the intersection with art?
- And IAALD re-launches its journal.
- “…students receiving online encouragement from the national soccer star reported going to bed at night looking forward to receiving their iron supplements the following morning.” Great, of course. But why not iron-rich foods?
- Speaking of which, there’s a new FAO publication on “Foods counting for the Nutritional Indicators Biodiversity.” No, I don’t quite understand it myself. Something to do with what foods count towards CBD biodiversity targets. Well, it’s the International Year of Biodiversity, after all.
- Indeed it is. And Nature makes the most of it. See what I did there? No agriculture though, natch.
- Extension gets a forum?
- Biotech can be useful in organic farming? Say it ain’t so!
- More evidence of shifting baselines in people’s perceptions of biodiversity. How quickly they forget.
- Will they forget what forests look like?
- The Vavilov Institute potato collection needs a thorough going over. Taxonomically, that is.
- Making salt in mangrove ponds in Fiji. Nice video. Not agrobiodiversity, but it’s my blog and I like seeing Fiji on it.
- CGIAR abandons agrobiodiversity? Say it ain’t so. Anyone?
- Speaking of megaprogrammes, there’s going to be one on agricultural adaptation to climate change, right?
- “So, how does huitlacoche taste? Does it matter?? LOOK AT IT! I guess it would be fair to say it doesn’t taste as truly horrible as it looks. The flavor is elusive and difficult to describe, but I’ll try: ‘Kinda yucky.'” Don’t believe him! And read the rest.