Nibbles

Nibbles: Slow FAO, Nuts, Pan-Hellenism, Dulcamaroids, Agrofroestry, Entrepreneur

Slow Food and FAO join forces “to develop joint actions to improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and others working in rural areas”. What could possibly go wrong?
Five ways to enjoy a walnut. But not until next harvest (except for 1 and 2)
A Pan-Hellenic Seed Exchange Festival took place last weekend. Sorry we missed it.
A revision of the Dulcamaroid Clade of Solanum L. (Solanaceae). Oh boy! Wild relative heaven.
If you’re in Suffolk, England, on 25 May you could join a study visit about agroforestry. And tell us about it here.
Fascinating write-up of Ajay Jha, whose “primary objective is to find profitable models for sustainable, nutritious, local urban and small acreage food production”.

After artichokes and asparagus, bamboo, obviously.
And after bamboo? Cassava, by any of its many names.
Botanical confusion: “Good tomatoes are a lot harder to get than good pot.” Not where I come from.
The Union of Concerned Scientists is concerned about US agriculture.
Per Pinstrup-Andersen is concerned about food price volatility, not high food prices.
And Jeremy is concerned that he may not be eating enough potatoes.
Luigi, for his part, is concerned about the two thirds of common plants that CIAT et al. say could lose 50% of their range by 2080.

Britain gets a tree seed bank. Wait, it didn’t already have one? St Helena seems to, sort of. And Cameroon. And why they’re needed more than ever; and more. Although in Brazil trees can be the bad guys.
Bill Gates praises CIMMYT, and the CGIAR as a whole.
A Renaissance garden recreated in NYC.
A survey on moringa. And one on achocha and oca.
And speaking of deconstructing weird crops, how about saffron?
Yet another one of those GMOs-are-not-as-bad-as-you-think pieces. Is any of this getting through, I wonder?
Free range pigs in Kenya and the USA.
Speaking of free range livestock… Well, a species distantly related to livestock anyway. Oh, and here’s another restoration story, from another continent.
Free range glass eels too. And salmon, after a fashion.
Traditional potatoes in fancy Lima restaurants. Maybe with pork or fish?

Iron Chef edition:

Preserve Amalfi lemons. (No, not that kind of preserve.)
Ist International Quinoa Research Symposium comes to Washington. (No, not that Washington.)
Sago before rice in Ancient China. (A remark about sago being dessert isn’t going to fly, is it?)
Know your onions and, er, “make love to them”?

System of Rice Intensification increases yields, not incomes, because it takes time away from other jobs. Caveats apply.
Which does not deter Rajendra Uprety, an SRI activist, in Nepal, where rice farmers “hydridize technology”.
In reviewing the global march of GMOs, a plea for policies to promote “much more crop diversity”. Well of course we agree.
US food company executives fear “weather extremes” more than anything else in 2013.
The same fears may have driven Chinese people to food processing 23,000 years ago. A grind not being able to access the PNAS paper.