- Short, slightly random piece on the CATIE genebank.
- Equally short and equally random piece on genebanks in general, leading with CATIE, closing with Svalbard. I suppose one shouldn’t be looking at a gift horse in the mouth.
- A Ugandan field genebank is suffering from thefts. Maybe we shouldn’t call them banks.
- Jamaica wants a coconut genebank. Hope it has a strong fence.
Nibbles: Crop failure, Transformation, Malta genebank, Virginia fruits, Nigeria genebank, Bean breeding, Peasants’ rights
- Multiple simultaneous crop failures are going to get more common.
- All the more reason to transform food system, right?
- Which means funding genebanks properly, even on Malta.
- And saving what can still be saved. Like fruit trees in the US, yes, why not?
- But you have to know what to do with all that stuff in genebanks. Nigeria is showing a way to do that.
- One thing you can do is breed beans which take less time to cook. Win-win.
- While doing all that, let’s not forget peasants’ rights.
Nibbles: Agroecology, Wheat breeding, NUS in LA, Fonio beer, Herbarium seeds, Ukraine herbarium, Grasspea breeding, Plant Treaty
- You want agroecology? Don’t neglect labour issues.
- You can’t neglect hot dry winds if you want the breed wheat for Kansas these days.
- IFPRI continues to ride the latest neglected crops bandwagon, this time in Latin America.
- In Africa, beer may rescue fonio from neglect.
- Rescuing plants from herbarium sheets.
- Rescuing herbarium sheets in Ukraine.
- Breeding a safe grasspea will definitely save it from neglect.
- Meanwhile, in Rome, negotiations to enhance the Plant Treaty’s multilateral system of access and benefit sharing re-start. I bet a whole bunch of neglected crops are on the agenda.
Nibbles: Milpa revival, Cretan olive, Lost apples, Moche meals, African agroecology, Global Tree Knowledge Platform, Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity
- Marketing the milpa.
- Marketing a traditional Cretan olive variety.
- Finding lost apples in New England. Now to market them.
- Taking new passion fruit varieties to market in Australia.
- Deconstructing Moche history, society and culture through compost and struggle meals. No sign of markets.
- Reviewing the state of agroecology in Africa. Does “economic diversification” count as marketing?
- The Global Tree Knowledge Platform must have stuff on marketing somewhere.
- The books series ISSUES IN AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY, now free to download, has lots on marketing.
Nibbles: SDG funding, GBIF RoI, Food system revitalisation, Bean Power, British baked beans, Cock beer, Access Agriculture, SCANR, Nuts, Hawaii, USDA livestock, Norway livestock, SPC, and WorldVeg genebanks, Millet ambassador, Mango orchards, Wild foods, Degraded lands, Orphan crops, PPB, Biofortification, Ugali, Variety ID, Variety definitions
- The SDGs need proper long-term financing, say Prof. Jeffrey Sachs and co-authors. Maybe he’d like to have a look at the the Crop Trust’s endowment fund for SDG 2.5?
- There’s a 15x return on investment from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)? Ok, do Genesys next.
- Want to revitalize the food system? Think lentils, bananas, kale and walnuts. My take? Why stop there?
- I mean, there’s all sorts of cool pulses besides lentils, nice as they are.
- Really no end to them.
- Want some cock beer with your Lincolnshire beans? I bet you do.
- Shout out for the Access Agriculture farmer-to-farmer educational video platform from the Seed System Newsletter. Nothing on walnuts, alas. Or cock beer.
- As we’re on online resources, there’s also the Support Centre for Agriculture and Nutrition Research (SCANR). It “connects researchers with resources and guidance for carrying out interdisciplinary research related to agriculture, food systems, nutrition, and health.” I wonder what it has to say about walnuts.
- Nut genebank gets an upgrade in Oregon. No, not walnuts, alas. It’s Miller time!
- Lots of genebank action in Hawaii too.
- Livestock also getting the genebank treatment in the US.
- But not just in the US: Norway too. Love these back-from-the-brink stories.
- The regional genebank for the Pacific is one of my favourites.
- It’s up there with that of the World Vegetable Centre, which is getting a write-up in the New Yorker, of all places.
- Of course you can have community-level genebanks too. Here are two examples from India: conserving millets and mangoes.
- Maybe there should be more genebanks for wild food species, but these cool in situ conservation stories will do for now.
- Investing in community farming projects can revitalise degraded lands.
- Those farming project don’t have to involve orphan crops, but it wouldn’t hurt.
- You could do participatory plant breeding on them, couldn’t you. This book says that be just the ticket for rural revitalisation. Lots of revitalisation in these Nibbles.
- They would help with malnutrition where maize biofortification hasn’t worked so well, for example.
- Maize? Maize needs to be decolonized, not biofortified.
- Extension workers need to be better at identifying different crop varieties. IITA is on the case, but doesn’t seem to have thought about putting the data on GBIF. Walnuts next?
- Wait, what’s a variety?