In situ

November 13, 2024November 14, 2024

Wild strawberries and other Nordic resources

NordGen is running a great series of weekly webinars on crop wild relatives conservation. You can find recordings of the past three on their website, but I can’t figure out how to sign up for future ones.

LATER: Thanks to Sara for her comment providing the link you’ll need to sign up for future webinars.

November 11, 2024November 8, 2024

Brainfood: CC & livelihoods, Landscape approaches, Seed system metrics, Grain traders, Cultivar adoption, WTP for African rice, Restoration networks

A systematic literature review on the impact of climate change on the livelihoods of smallholder farmers in South Africa. Things look bad, but crop and livestock diversity (among other things) can help. If only they can get out to farmers I guess.
Reconciling conservation and development requires enhanced integration and broader aims: A cross-continental assessment of landscape approaches. Correction, I meant out into the landscape.
Towards gender-transformative metrics in seed system performance measurement: insights for policy and practice in Sub-Sahara Africa. How do you know if crop diversity will be able to get into those farming landscapes? You need these gender-transformative metrics. Things like the number of community seed banks serving women and youths, for example.
Cowpea grain sales by women and men traders in local markets of Senegal. Women seed traders need help scaling up. Maybe community seed banks could help?
Promoting new crop cultivars in low-income countries requires a transdisciplinary approach. Maybe women seed traders could help.
An experimental approach to farmer valuation of African rice genetic resources. Farmers are willing to pay as much for landrace seeds as for improved varieties, and those who know about landraces are willing to pay more for their seeds than those who don’t. Good for those women traders to know.
Restoration seed and plant material supply chains are complex social networks. And not just for restoration, I’d say.

November 7, 2024November 7, 2024

Nibbles: Diverse diets double, WB nutrition, Biodiversity credits, European ag, Indigenous ag, Asparagus varieties, Kenya genebank, CGIAR genebanks, Svalbard, Sierra Leone genebank

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.

October 22, 2024October 22, 2024

The latest on the Carolina African Runner Peanut

Jeremy’s latest newsletter discusses the (partial) revival of the Carolina African Runner Peanut by chefs. We have blogged about that here on before, but this is a useful update.

Believe it or not, there are other food podcasts worth listening to. One of them is Gravy, produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Recently I listened to the episode America’s Lost Peanut and the Price of Bringing it Back and I have no hesitation in recommending you do the same. It explores both the delight chefs have found in that Lost Peanut and the difficulties in making the peanut available at a price that non-chefs can afford.

The Carolina Runner peanut first hit modern headlines at the tail end of 2016, when it was exciting enough for me to record a little rumination casting doubt on some of the wilder claims that surrounded its resurrection. I also wrote at some length about the history of the peanut and world affairs. I did not, however, foresee how hard it would be for the Carolina Runner to compete with Virginia peanuts (which have more than a drop of African peanut in their bloodlines). The episode of Gravy explains that the nuts currently have to be shelled by hand, unlike Virginia peanuts that can be fed into huge and expensive machines. A quick look around the internet showed a few hand-operated shellers; is it really that difficult to adapt one to work with Carolina Runners?

October 21, 2024October 18, 2024

Brainfood: Food systems, Micronutrients, Animal-source foods, Dietary diversity, Opportunity crops, Traditional landscapes, Gastronomic landscapes, Opportunity crops, Biofortification, Fermentation

Global and local perspectives on food security and food systems. Six experts have their say on how to transform food systems, and dietary diversity seems to be a common (though not a universal) theme. Let’s dig a little deeper into that.
Global estimation of dietary micronutrient inadequacies: a modelling analysis. A lot of people could probably do with eating more fruits and vegetables, for example.
Plant-based diets–impacts of consumption of little or no animal-source foods on human health. Some people could probably do with eating more animal-source foods, though. Well, that’s diversity too.
The association between crop diversity and children’s dietary diversity: multi-scalar and cross-national comparisons. In some places, growing more diverse crops is associated with eating more diverse diets; in other places, not so much. Damn you, nuance!
Revive and Thrive: Forgotten Crops for Resilient Food Systems. Fortunately, there are more advantages to growing more diverse crops than its possible positive effect on diet diversity…
Why traditional rural landscapes are still important to our future. …yes indeed there are, especially if they are grown in diverse landscapes.
Nurturing gastronomic landscapes for biosphere stewardship. The hallowed craft of cooking can help realize those advantages.
NUS so fast: the social and ecological implications of a rapidly developing indigenous food economy in the Cape Town area. However, growing more diverse crops can have downsides, celebrity chefs etc. notwithstanding.
Assessing realized genetic gains in biofortified cassava breeding for over a decade: Enhanced nutritional value and agronomic performance. Breeding crops for higher nutritional value comes at a yield price. Which presumably, in some places, for some people, may be worth paying, give all the uncertainties above?
The future is fermented: Microbial biodiversity of fermented foods is a critical resource for food innovation and human health. Or, we could all ferment more. And maybe get drunk.