Food crisis almost over, people starving as usual

Agriculture related press releases continue to start with a sentences like “The current crisis in world food prices…”. Take these three of yesterday’s posts on this blog: the above quote is from the article discussed in Great Expectations; we need induced mutations because: “The global nature of the food crisis is unprecedented”; and it is also a reason to go forth and grow halophytes: “There’s a real urgency to addressing the issue of rising food and fuel prices.”

Haven’t they noticed that the crisis is (almost) over? Supply is up and speculators are retracting. The first stories about complaining farmers are coming in. Perhaps I am missing the point of the long term trend of dearer oil (fertilizer) and climate change?

Either way, in a couple of months we’ll be back to business as usual. Cheap food, and,

every day, almost 16,000 children that die from hunger-related causes — one child every five seconds.

Do the right thing


Dan Barber waxes lyrical about foie gras. Not, you might think, the most agrobiodiversity-laden topic in the world. And entirely inappropriate given that a billion people don’t have enough to eat. Hear him out, though, and then decide whether what he says makes sense.

Nibbles: Wikiforéts, Super-rape, Gut microbiome, Soybeans, Golf courses, Chestnuts, Rice, Yeast

Cocoa from tree to cup

News from both ends of the cacao value chain today. At the upstream end, new molecular marker work on over a thousand genebank accessions reveals that the species is divided into no less than 10 genetic clusters, rather than the conventionally recognized two. These show a clear geographic pattern: they are strung out along an east-west axis in the Amazon, probably reflecting, according to the authors, the location of ancient ridges (“palaeoarches”), which were barriers to dispersal not only for Theobroma but also for various fish groups. Meanwhile, at the downstream end, there’s an account of a visit to a “chocoholic mecca” in Santa Fe.

LATER. And, for the trifecta, news from somewhere around the middle of the value chain.

LATER STILL. What comes after trifecta?