Markets

Nibbles: Genomic data, Seed porn, Ancient Amazonian ag, Genebanks Down Under, Climate data porn, Fiber in Maine, REDD+ at the CBD, Colony Collapse Disorder, Chili porn, Seed systems

GBIF makes its move.
Homaging the seed.
Learning sustainability from old Amazonian farmers. Really old. Really, really old.
Yet another Aussie genebank. Or maybe the same one, I’ve lost track. And interest.
Where climate data comes from.
Maine’s fiber community, what, exposed? Unveiled? Uncovered? And similar from Bolivia.
REDD+ will save us all.
Don’t crack open the mead to celebrate the solution to colony collapse disorder just yet.
All things Capsicum on one handy website.
Whole bunch of policy briefs on African seed systems. Don’t know if I’ll ever have the time to read through the lot, but cursory perusal suggests the following bottom line: the market can’t do it all by itself.

No more mopani worms in Zimbabwe. Luigi distraught.
More tosh on Svalbard. Nobody distraught.
Chestnut blight threatens UK chestnuts. Castanophiles distraught.
The oily charms of West African cuisine. Did someone say “oily”?
Another big panel of the great and the good has issued a deafening report; Gordon Conway, panellist, tells us “How to create resilient agriculture“.
DFID fertilises Vietnamese mushroom farms. Kept in the dark and fed manure?
Yacon spotted in Malaysia. Just ask for snow lotus fruit.
The World Bank has published a Sourcebook on Agricultural Innovation. So can we all go home now?
Step inside the Millennium Seed Bank. A video.
ProMusa disentangles Pacific bananas, the better to conserve them.

Projects I should probably know about but had never heard of, no. 37: Cassava: Adding Value for Africa (C:AVA).
Projects I should probably know about but had never heard of, no. 38: African Food Tradition rEvisited by Research (AFTER). Mopane left unvisited, though, alas.
More from the ITPGRFA Secretary Down Under.
From genebank to farmers: bananas in the Philippines.
Things are looking up: there’s a new Plant Cuttings out.
We should all go back to seed school. Hey, just tell me where.
Family gardens for refugees. And for urban folk in Ethiopia.
Learning from the past in order not to repeat it, Vol. 88: Sustainble fisheries. Repeating it anyway, Vol. 565543 coming all too soon. No, wait, here it is…
It’s that time of year again, isn’t it. Spring. Bah, humbug.

The banana in the Pacific. Including those orange ones…
Swapping seeds at Kew. A genebank reaches out.
Gosh is that all today? Looks like it. You guys out there have anything?
No, wait, here’s something else. Huge cassava conference coming up, with its biodiversity on the agenda. These guys will probably be there.

On my signal, unleash the potential of small farmers and food producers worldwide. Has a return ring to it.
More than anyone could reasonably want to know about wild banana relatives in Thailand.
Big stinky flower with its own webcam. Must be a wild relative of something.
Better in many ways to catch a diversity of fish species than to focus on one.
Could probably do with some guidelines for access to fisheries, though, right?
International Seed Treaty secretariat knocks ‘em dead down under. “THREE-quarters of the world’s crop biodiversity has been irrevocably lost since 1900.”
Of course it has. Did Dr Bhatti visit this place during his tour of Oz, I wonder? If not, maybe he’ll visit Mexico next and see this place. And speaking of Mexico…
Mexico sneezes, US grain exports catch a cold?
World record potato harvest in Bihar; there’s a lot that’s fishy about this story.
“Khat cultivation in Ethiopia fuels economy, reduces deforestation.” And makes people sick, but who’s counting.
Ah but here’s a possible alternative. Now, if only CIFOR and ILRI would talk together about this.