- Egyptian tech turns rice straw into paper, insecticide. Don’t suppose anyone thought of turning it into the soil?
- Changing Kenyan climate threatens traditional rainmakers. Pouring cold water on my desire to make a witty comment.
- Diana learns how to hold her pombe straw, and much else besides.
- Gary Nabhan profile. He “gives life to nearly extinct grains, veggies.”
More research on agriculture needed
Nature News reports on a meeting last week hosted by Jeff Sachs at Columbia University in New York. The idea was to create a global agriculture monitoring network, something he’s been promoting for a while, and all the big guns were there. 1 Sachs told the meeting that scientists “simply do not have the data they need to properly explore” how agriculture has changed the world. “We want to understand ecosystems and the people who are living in them,” Sachs said.
Good thinking. Sandy Andelman, of Conservation International, told the meeting about a pilot project in Tanzania.
In addition to basic environmental data about soils, nutrients and land cover, the project tracks agricultural practices. It also incorporates data about income, health and education that is maintained by the government. Andelman says that … initial results from the project have already prompted the Tanzanian government to adjust the way it zones agricultural land in the area.
That does sound good. I wonder, though, do the “agricultural practices” Andelman monitors have anything on the deliberate use of specific agricultural biodiversity to buffer against environmental shocks, or to enhance resilience in the face of pests and diseases, or to adapt to climate change? Maybe, though I’m not holding my breath. When Sachs first floated the idea, on which Andelman was a co-author, Luigi noted that it didn’t “mention the desirability of monitoring levels of agricultural biodiversity on-farm”.
Some of the meeting attendees want to go slow. The Gates Foundation thinks “a dozen or so” would be a good start to “get the ball rolling”. Sachs wants more. Nature News says he envisages “500 sites within two or three years”.
“We need to get this thing up and running,” he says, warning of the perils of endless organizational meetings. “I don’t want to spend ten years on this.”
Agreed, but it would be even worse, in my opinion, to build such a network, even if it does take 10 years, and not monitor the amount of agrobiodiversity and how farmers make use of it.
Nibbles: Swaziland, Traditional Knowledge, Climate change, Apples, Winged beans, Ambakkadan Cassava
- Queen Mother Ntombi Indlovukazi of Swaziland receives the FANRPAN 2011 Food Security Policy Leadership Award. Her son’s a caution too.
- Summaries of presentations at Informing International Policy on Traditional Knowledge, Mexico 2011.
- CGIAR book on “climate-proofing” crops critical to food security in the developing world.
- Happy Birthday to the McIntosh apple.
- Rhizowen’s winged beans fail to take flight.
- Sharefair hears how women farmers in India resurrected a favoured cassava.
- Sharefair hears dream-team pitch on frike, or as we prefer to say, freekeh.
Nibbles: Moringa, Fungi, Blue potatoes, GRAIN, Nutrition, Maize Day, Sorghum research
- Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
- Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
- Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
- GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
- Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
- Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
- How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.
Nibbles: IRRI impact, Peruvian food, Nutritional strategy, Ethnobiology, Street food forum, Mulefoot hogs, Polyculture, Cheeses, Asimina triloba, Protected areas
- Australians justify their investment in IRRI. Now that’s what I call impact!
- Peruvian cuisine takes over the world. But, as Eve points out elsewhere, “We have a thousand kinds of potatoes in Peru, thousands” is not hyperbole.
- Jess scoops the world with a nutrition strategy for the masses.
- Indians need sorghum and millets to keep healthy.
- Ethnobiology: The Book.
- Talking about street food. Hold the mayo.
- Not all pigs are cloven-hoofed. A tetrapod zoologist explains syndactyly.
- Polyculture; is it all Pollyanna? Science will answer.
- A flavour map of British cheeses. You know you need it.
- Foraging for pawpaws. Not those pawpaws.
- Bird areas apps. CWRs next?