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February 6, 2012February 6, 2012

Consolidation in the seed industry

We’ve written before about consolidation in the seed industry making the same tired joke that I want to make again now, that a picture is worth 1000 words. It doesn’t hurt to stay up to date though, which is why I am grateful to Resources Research for finding, and colouring in, the diagram from the USDA report on Research Investments and Market Structure in the Food Processing, Agricultural Input, and Biofuel Industries Worldwide.

The USDA report is not, as far as I can tell, anything to do with the US Department of Justice’s investigation of antitrust practices in the seed industry, announced a couple of years ago. So what has become of that? Anyone know?

February 6, 2012February 6, 2012

Nibbles: Mike Jackson blog, Philippines genebank fire, Ancient garden, USA maps, Horse domestication, Gnats, Livestock training, Chocolate, Epigenetics, Indian nutritional security, Kew fund, GM bananas, Reconciling databases

Mike Jackson gets himself a pulpit. Welcome to the blogosphere, Mike!
More on the Filipino ex-genebank.
What they grew in an ancient Israelite garden. Can they really tell Citrus species apart from their pollen?
More American maps to mashup with obesity and food insecurity: land use, renewable energy sources…. I do hope someone is keeping track. Even of the more esoteric stuff, of course, like the names of softdrinks.
Yet more on horse domestication.
Another organic farming externality for your consideration. Thanks, Robert.
ILRI gets innovative on this whole training thing.
“The future of chocolate” revealed.
Boffins look at fossil bison epigenetics to investigate adaptation to climate change. What will they think of next. Well, applying it to chickens, for a start.
Other boffins move potato anti-nematode genes into bananas. No word on the epigenetics of it all.
Indian report on how to strengthen role of agriculture in nutrition.
Kew has money for fieldwork.
Cleaning messy taxonomic data. Useful in Genebank Database Hell?

February 4, 2012February 4, 2012

Nibbles: Ancient animal DNA, Augustine Henry

Big grant for TC Dublin to create DNA matrix of ancient livestock, will identify parchments too.
Kew unites Augustine Henry’s letters with the objects and specimens he collected; agrobiodiversity included.

February 4, 2012February 4, 2012

How they make cheese

This Sunday, an estimated 58 percent of Americans will order pizza for Super Bowl parties around the country. To celebrate Game Day classics like pizza, cheese dips and nachos, we went to Wisconsin — the American dairyland that produces 35 percent of the country’s cheese — to find out the chemistry behind cheesemaking.

The “we” in this case is the American Chemical Society, and having been to the University of Wisconsin and sampled the delights of the Babcock Hall experimental ice-cream shop, I was anxious to see the ACS video. Alas, it is as dull as factory cheese. And in light of that “58% will order pizza” statistic, I wish instead the ACS — or the University of Wisconsin-Madison — had investigated the whole business of analog, imitation substitute cheese which, and I’m guessing here, probably feature prominently, and possibly exclusively, on 98.2% of the pizzas those 58% of Americans are going to order.

February 3, 2012February 6, 2012

Mapping America

So there I was Scooping away, and what should turn up among the stuff I follow, and almost side by side on the screen to boot? Well, this map of obesity rates and farmer markets in the USA:

And, I kid you not, this map of food insecurity in, you guessed it, the USA.

Eyeballing does suggest a certain association between obesity and food insecurity, doesn’t it? Talk about the double burden of malnutrition. Oh the fun one could have mixing and matching such maps, and the no doubt dozens of others that also exist out there, documenting the geographic distribution of McDonald’s, organic farms, drunkenness, gyms, pet ownership, house prices, fizzy drink consumption, weed busts…