Information

October 12, 2007October 13, 2007

Food Security and Nutrition Forum

The Agricultural Development Economics Division of FAO is launching a Food Security and Nutrition Forum (FSN Forum) on 16th October.

The purpose of this Forum is to provide an online platform where practitioners can share their experiences and resources, provide peer coaching and support and find collective solutions to issues related to Food Security and Nutrition (FS&N), with a focus on FS&N Policies and Strategies. Discussions will take place on the Forumâ€™s mailing list and directly on the Forumâ€™s website. The Web site is also an important pool of relevant resources and information on FS&N. The forum is public. Joining the forum is free, voluntary and open to anyone interested in contributing advice, experience and expertise for use by others, or for adapting othersâ€™ advice, experience and expertise for their own use.

I’ll keep an eye on the discussion and post any really interesting stuff that comes up on the role of agrobiodiversity in food and nutritional security.

October 11, 2007October 12, 2007

Farmer Field Schools

I think we may have blogged before about a series of educational videos on the management of the rice crop aimed at your actual rice farmer. But there’s no harm in mentioning them again, especially since it gives me the opportunity of linking to the very useful resource centre of the Global Farmer Field School Network, which brings them all together and packages them with additional information. The siteÂ is serchable, and a quick look revealed quite a few interesting things on agrobiodiversity. Again, thanks to the indefatigable Danny for the link.

October 11, 2007October 11, 2007

African Crop Science Meeting

The 8th African Crop Science Society meeting will take place in Egypt from 27 to 31 October. Could be some interesting papers, if anyone survives scrutiny of the conference web page). We keep saying this, and we keep meaning it: if any reader is at the meeting and wants to send a report, we’ll be happy to receive it.

October 10, 2007October 10, 2007

BGCI Video Project

Botanic Gardens Conservation International wants YOU to make a film! I hope some of them at least will be about the agricultural biodiversity that botanic gardens conserve and study — crop wild relatives, for example. But hey, don’t forget we have a video competition here too!

October 10, 2007October 10, 2007

Rice, China and climate change

The map shows rice yield in China by county for 1996 ((Thanks to Robert Hijmans, IRRI.)). The pattern it shows has changed significantly in the past 20 years, and will probably change more in the next 20. Climate change will drive that to some extent, of course. But not just climate change. Robert Hijmans, a geographer at IRRI, has a nice feature in Rice Today discussing the “relocation of rice production in China.”

Remember Jeremy has an omnibus post about Chinese agrobiodiversity.