Nibbles

Nibbles: Meat, GMOs, Fungi, Africa, Aid, Artichon, IYB, Rare onion, Hummus, Fig

Professor said meat should be properly priced to avoid disaster. Why just meat?
“The Seed Makers Who Don’t Pray for Rain.” Slick, but do they actually pray for drought?
Found the above here, but is GMO drought resistance really “very important stuff to making farming sustainable”?
Kenyan farmers grow mushrooms. Fun, guys.
Does Africa need better product branding?
Public Aid, Philanthropy, and the Privatization of African Agricultural Development. I confess, I didn’t understand most of it.
Rhizowen invents the artichon. Who says there’s no new food to be discovered?
Kew celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Pollinators get a look-in.
Rome celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Agriculture prominent.
IUCN celebrates Allium pskemense: edible, medicinal, a crop wild relative, and threatened.
World record plate of hummus, 10,452 kg of tasty serotonin.
Local man sends USDA a fig they didn’t have in their genebank.

A Global Island Database for all you GIS geeks.
African palms threatened by climate change: sensitive to climate, but constrained in their movement.
But careful, it is easy to overestimate extinction risk when playing around with climate suitability models.

Boffins trying to domesticate Allanblackia for its oil.
Phyteuma spicatum must be saved, British folklore depends on it. How about domesticating it?
Farmers replanting forest in inland Niger delta. Sort of domesticating the forest, you mean?
And here’s another domesticated forest, this time in Kerala.
Are oysters domesticated? And seaweeds? Lots of uses for seaweeds, after all.
Why plant breeding is incompatible with organic agriculture. Eh? First of a trilogy.
Management of plant genetic resources in Brazil deconstructed.
Oh dear, now boffins say avoiding bycatch may not be good after all.
CTA calls for research notes in preparation for proposal writing workshop on neglected and underutilized plants.
New Sight and Life magazine is out, with interesting discussions of Vitamin A supplementation in newborns and HIV patients.
While at Scidev.net HarvestPlus defends biofortified crops against charge of medicalizing micronutrient deficiency.

At last, sustainable clarinets!
Hummus war gets serious. All that seratonin not helping?
“Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men.” Simon Schama on Quercus robur. Note to BBC: learn how to write species names.
Pop quiz: Some 20,000 tons of this seed were delivered by Aztec farmers in annual tribute to their emperor, Montezuma. Now big in the US, according to NYTimes piece. From 1984.

Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.