Markets for agrobiodiversity to the fore today. Two resources highlighted by Eldis look at strategies for agricultural diversification and at the importance of assessing market potential in prioritizing among indigenous fruit trees for promotion and development. And once you get your high-value agricultural product to market you will want to guard against pilferage and counterfeiting, won’t you?
Higher food prices
OK, so there’s no direct link with agricultural biodiversity, but if you’re the least bit interested in the subject you will be aware of the flap over higher food prices. A lot of tosh has been written on the subject, so I was pleased to see a fine article on food prices by Paul Krugman ((Yes, I know he’s a pinkie green who eats small babies, but that doesn’t mean he’s necessarily wrong.)) that gives a pretty good overview. I found it through an Economist blog, which had this to say:
What’s needed, of course, is a lender of last resort. An overarching entity–a central bank for grain–could help to solve the collective action problem hindering market function. If everyone participates in the market, then prices will be lower and supplies surer than if individual nations defect.
Unfortunately, it isn’t clear what institutions might be able to step into the current void. And grain isn’t the same as fiat money. Where a central bank can respond to desperate liquidity shortages by printing money, grain must be grown. With stockpiles at 20 year lows, there doesn’t seem to be much room for grain injections. As Mr Krugman says, “[I]t’s not clear how much can be done. Cheap food, like cheap oil, may be a thing of the past.”
Get used to it.
Wild silk explored
It was only just over a year ago that I wrote, from Nairobi, a post about silk making in Kenya that elicited a number of comments. Seems like a lifetime ago. Anyway, today there’s an article in Science in Africa about attempts to make an industry out of wild silk in southern Africa. Sounds very promising. Via.
Nibbles: Aromatics, local food, rice, trade, cetriolo mate, maize, sweet potato, media
- The International Symposium on Aromatic and Medicinal Plants, 3-6 November 2008 in Noumea, New Caledonia. Anyone interested in live blogging it for us? He asked, to thunderous silence.
- Modern Forager on the traditional diets of some funky places.
- IRRI flickrs rice photos. Another day, another neologism. Via.
- The lengths people will go to exchange agrobiodiversity. Sorry, I have a thing about maps of trade routes. Via.
- Australian woman adopts Italian cucumber.
- Corn domesticated even earlier in Ecuador.
- Sweet potato may have got to the Pacific islands by chance.
- The truth about those hipster farmers; “it must be true, I read it in the paper”.
Recommendations of the Underutilized Plants Symposium
This just in from Hannah Jaenicke, Director of the International Centre for Underutilized Crops (ICUC):
Over 200 delegates from 55 countries gathered in Arusha, Tanzania 3-7 March 2008 for an International Symposium on “Underutilized plant species for food, nutrition, income and sustainable development”. The Symposium was co-convened under the umbrella of the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) by the International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) with the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species, Bioversity International, GlobalHort, Plant Resources of Tropical Africa, and the World Vegetable Center, whose Regional Center for Africa was the local host.
The symposium was a resounding approval of the need for a working group on underutilized plant species to provide a voice to those who are working on these plants. The delegates endorsed the International Society for Horticultural Sciences’ working group on underutilized plants, which is co-chaired by Dr Hannah Jaenicke of the International Centre for Underutilised Crops (ICUC) and Dr Irmgard Hoeschle-Zeledon of the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilized Species (GFU), and filled it with life and suggestions for future collaboration on research and development projects. A report will be published and circulated in the near future.
Following three days of over 150 scientific presentations, the participants developed a series of recommendations around four pertinent issues.
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