- Hoary zombie gender myths bite the dust. Wish the same could be said of agrobiodiversity myths…
- The first cabbage, according to the ancient Greeks. A myth we can all get behind.
- WWF maps deforestation hotspots. Like the whole of Sumatra.
- Profits not the (only) point of urban farming.
- Maintaining food culture by gardening in a Native American community. See what I mean?
- After citrus greening, now comes laurel wilt. Poor Florida.
- Biodiversity conservation through tourism in Latin America. Including agrobiodiversity?
- The trees and shrubs of mopane woodlands, illustrated.
- European biofuels hit the buffers.
The rough value of genebanks
In 2012, The NPGS [the US National Plant Germplasm System] budget was approximately $47 million. Funding for the NPGS has been relatively stagnant over time. In real terms, agency funding peaked in 2003, at approximately $53 million in 2012 dollars (fig. 1). While direct comparisons between costs of a genebank and its benefits are not possible, 1 for context, we note that U.S. farmers paid $20.3 billion for seed in 2012 (USDA\National Agricultural Statistics Service, 2013). Thus, the costs of public ex situ plant conservation in the United States are a small fraction—under half of 1 percent—of the value of the eventual seed market. At the same time that budgets have decreased, demand for NPGS germplasm has reached historic highs (fig. 2).
Gotta love it when economists give up on quantitative data, and settle for qualitative comparisons.
When compared to the rather large benefits of genetic enhancement, the costs of genebank operation appear relatively small.
But do read the whole of USDA’s Using Crop Genetic Resources To Help Agriculture Adapt to Climate Change: Economics and Policy by Paul W. Heisey and Kelly Day Rubenstein. There is some data in there, and that perennial fall-back of economists, a model. The main findings, if you just want to just skip to the bottom line, were that genebanks are worth it, but that better data and some pre-breeding would help.
Nibbles: Long live genebanks, ART in Ireland, Peruvian cacao, Cacao & CC, Canadian aid & wheat, Coffee trials, Organic redux, American garden survey, Cranberry breeding, Bean breeding, Expo Milano 2015, Olive disease, Insect meal, Save cider, Garum, Asian PGR network, Fig vid, McCouch, Pastoralist Knowledge Hub
- Sexing up genebanks.
- Inventive wheat drought phenotyping. Want more?
- The Irish try out other Andean crops. Because the first one worked out so well.
- Peruvian cocoa goes up-market. Others might not get the chance.
- Latest batch of IDRC food security projects: African veggies, chickpeas, lentils… Meanwhile, back home in Canada…
- Some major coffee producers are probably in trouble. Will the International Multi-location Variety Trials help at all?
- Crop genomic data boffins say crop genomic data should be free. DivSeek unavailable for comment.
- The latest from Rodale on why organic is better. Well, it certainly affects microbial diversity.
- Smithsonian helps to preserve the Great American Garden through citizen science.
- Blimey, it takes 15 years to release a cranberry cultivar. That’s nothing, Kenyan canning bean breeders say.
- Expo Milano 2015 is coming, and Bioversity will be there in force.
- The olive is under threat. Always something.
- If you don’t want to eat insects, you can always feed them to your livestock.
- There’s a campaign to save small cider producers in the UK. which we can all get behind, I’m sure.
- Make your own garum. If you must.
- Asian countries to launch regional PGR network. What, again?
- An ode to figs.
- Gotta love
weedweeds. - FAO gives pastoralists a voice. Or a website, rather.
Nibbles: Heirloom apples, Cowpeas, Lettuces, Livestock, Taste, Soil, Nutrition, Meat, Malaria tea, SIRGEALC, ABS
- Is “heritage” just “heirloom” for “birds and animals”? I for one don’t think so. These apples are heritage, for example.
- Saving the Sea Island Red Pea. Which is a heritage cowpea, I think.
- 43 different types of heritage lettuce illustrated.
- Eat those heirloom pigs or lose them.
- Taste and nutrition go hand in hand.
- Soils are part of traditional agricultural heirloom systems.
- Heirloom shmeirloom, those food systems need some work if they are to deliver nutrition.
- The case for meat, heirloom or otherwise. And a whole series of posts on how to best feed all those cows.
- A herbal tea against malaria.
- The 10th SIRGEALC is on the horizon.
- A lot of people going to that will probably need these resources on implementing both the International Treaty and the Nagoya Protocol at the same time.
Nibbles: Grazing, Saving foodways, Amaranth, Fortification, Avocado threats, Kew job, Coffee photos, PhyloLink, Nutrition & ag, Remote sensing
- Grazing is good for grassland.
- Saving British food. And that of Ghana too, why not?
- Amaranth the next superfood? Maybe, but I vote we ban that silly term.
- The case for fortification: diverse diets are just too hard.
- And the latest fruit that’s in trouble is…the avocado.
- Wanna “[s]pend your summer in lovely Kew Gardens interacting with the public and opening people’s eyes and noses to the delightful world of spices”?
- Photographing the soul of coffee.
- Atlas of Living Australia adds nifty phylogenetic thingie.
- World Bank says “agriculture has a unique and critical role in improving nutritional status” so it must be true.
- Protecting forests from the air.