- Nice video celebrating seeds.
- Nice old video about Kew Gardens.
- Tracing the origins of Indonesian cassava. No, it wasn’t introduced by Kew, but yes, colonialism was involved.
- Latest data on where crops are grown. Including cassava.
- Self Help Africa director turns on to neglected crops. Including cassava.
- New lab in Kenya for spreading clean crops around. Including cassava?
- Türkiye’s genebank in the news. No cassava.
- Nepalese rice gets a Welsh upgrade.
- Collecting sugarcane in French Polynesia to (eventually) support local booze industry.
- Long live the ancient booze bandwagon.
- Garlic 101.
Agricultural biodiversity conference and survey
A couple of quick announcements today that I don’t want to get lost in Nibbles.
First, there’s an International Conference on Agrobiodiversity going on in Nepal. I just found out about it, but it’s hybrid, so you can still join.
Second, if you’re an expert on potatoes or sweet potatoes, consider taking this survey from CIP.
Brainfood: Food shift, Food footprint, Periodic Table of Food, Nutritious food, Diverse food, Food seed kits, Food meta-metrics
- Food matters: Dietary shifts increase the feasibility of 1.5°C pathways in line with the Paris Agreement. Go flexitarian.
- Biodiversity footprints of 151 popular dishes from around the world. Go flexitarian?
- Periodic Table of Food Initiative for generating biomolecular knowledge of edible biodiversity. Unclear if flexitarians have the best molecules.
- Environmentally protective diets may come with trade-offs for micronutrient adequacy. More sustainable may mean less nutritious. Flexitarians unavailable for comment.
- Market engagement, crop diversity, dietary diversity, and food security: evidence from small-scale agricultural households in Uganda. Market access and crop diversification are both good for dietary diversity and food security. The ultimate flexitarianism.
- Sustainability of one-time seed distributions: a long-term follow-up of vegetable seed kits in Tanzania. Now watch flexitarians demand an even playing field.
- Developing holistic assessments of food and agricultural systems: A meta‑framework for metrics users. One framework to rule all of the above.
Nibbles: VACS, FAO forgotten foods, African roots, Hopi corn, Adivasis rice, Sustainable farming, Llama history, Vicuña sweaters, Portuguese cattle, Mexico genebank, NZ genebank, Bat pollination, Eat This Newsletter, WEF
- More on the US push for opportunity crops.
- Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO.
- Many of them are roots and tubers.
- For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop.
- For the Adivasis, it’s rice.
- And more along the same lines from Odisha.
- Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages.
- …and still are, for some.
- Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed.
- I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities.
- And New Zealand’s too.
- Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats.
- Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, among other things.
- And the best way to frame all of the above is that the World Economic Forum wants governments to ban people from growing their own food because that causes climate change.
Nibbles: Indian millets, Indian rice, Neolithic bread, Andean potatoes, UAE genebank, Niger onions, Lentil domestication, Italian rice, Sea cucumber
- The trouble with millets. Because there’s always room for a Star Trek allusion.
- Growing heritage rice varieties in Goa. With hardly any trouble, it seems.
- Really, really old bread. And more from Jeremy.
- Breeding company and CIP collaborating to save potato diversity in the Andes.
- Another genebank opens in the Gulf.
- The story of Niger’s Violet De Galmi onion. Or is it Niger’s?
- The latest crop to be called humble is the lentil.
- New varieties may help save risotto, but better water management will probably have to feature too, I suspect. Otherwise lentils could stand in I suppose.
- In the end, though, maybe we should all just cultivate sea cucumbers.