- Food Biodiversity as an Opportunity to Address the Challenge of Improving Human Diets and Food Security. Biodiversity and food security can be mutually supportive, but you need education, research and inclusion, say educators and researchers.
- Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Biodiversity and yield both win in only about a quarter of cases. But humanity does not live by yield alone, right?
- Accelerated Domestication of New Crops: Yield is Key. Ooops, looks like humanity does live by yield alone after all.
- Genetically Modified Maize: Less Drudgery for Her, More Maize for Him? Evidence from Smallholder Maize Farmers in South Africa. No, wait, man lives by yield alone, but not woman.
- Climate Change’s Impact on Agriculture and Food Security: An Opportunity to Showcase African Animal Genetic Resources. Forget GMO maize, Africa needs to develop its own agrobiodiversity…
- Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets. …and it need not be bad for either health or the environment.
- AgriDiverCluster: An Innovative Cluster for the Utilization of Greek Biodiversity and Plant Genetic Resources. Maybe the Greeks have a way to make it not bad for either health or the environment. By vertical integration, it looks like.
- Socio-ecological benefits of fine-flavor cacao in its center of origin. Amazonian cacao farmers also seem to have a way to vertically integrate.
Nibbles: Genebanks in Japan, India, SADC, China, Sustainable nutrition security
- Another recent article in the mainstream media about the Japanese genebank. Not entirely sure why, but let’s not look a gift horse etc etc. Couple nice examples of re-introduction of lost diversity to farmers.
- And here’s the mainstream media in India (and the PM, no less) singing the praises of a farmer custodian of millet diversity.
- The mainstream media in Zimbabwe doesn’t want to be left behind and jumps on the genebank bandwagon too with a piece about the SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre.
- Yes, silkworms need a genebank too, and China is all over it.
- The Union of Concerned Scientists wants a new definition of food security and genebanks could probably help with that.
Brainfood: NbS, Intercropping, Sparing, Mixtures, Intensification, Shifting cultivation, Mexican wild foods, Chinese NUS, Andean crops, South African indigenous foods, Uganda community seedbanks
- Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change? Nature-based solutions need to be diversity-based. Let’s look at some example, shall we? Buckle up…
- The productive performance of intercropping. Meta-analysis shows intercropping leads to more land sparing and more protein compared to monoculture.
- Sparing or expanding? The effects of agricultural yields on farm expansion and deforestation in the tropics. Ouch, increasing yield results more often in higher deforestation than lower. If only they had gone for intercropping…
- Crop mixtures outperform rotations and landscape mosaics in regulation of two fungal wheat pathogens: a simulation study. …or crop mixtures.
- Intensified rice production negatively impacts plant biodiversity, diet, lifestyle and quality of life: transdisciplinary and gendered research in the Middle Senegal River Valley. And just to be clear, agricultural expansion can be bad for both farmers and the environment.
- Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions. Being able to charge rent is the main driver of the move away from shifting cultivation, but the environmental results depend on what system replaces it.
- Contribution of the biodiversity of edible plants to the diet and nutritional status of women in a Zapotec communities of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the older, less educated housewives that are more nature-based, and all the better for it.
- Six Underutilized Grain Crops for Food and Nutrition in China. That would be barley, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, foxtail millet, oat, and sorghum, which would certainly make a nature-based breakfast of champions.
- Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector. Growing traditional crops in the Andes may be less profitable, but it is more resilient to climate change. Unclear which of the two options is more nature-based, though. And has anyone told China?
- Opportunities and Challenges of Indigenous Food Plant Farmers in Integrating into Agri-Food Value Chains in Cape Town. To take advantage of nature-based solutions in South Africa, you have to know about local nature.
- Community Seedbanks in Uganda: Fostering Access to Genetic Diversity and Its Conservation. More research is needed to figure out how community seedbanks can be at their nature-based best.
Nibbles: Fonio commercialization, Naked barley, Food books, Ag decarbonization, Nepal NUS, Millets & women, Crop diversity video, Maize god, Cherokee genebank, CWR, Japan genebank
- A Nigerian company is pushing fonio as the next global super-food. What could possibly go wrong?
- Personally, I think naked barley has a better chance.
- Humanities scholars recommend their favourite new books on food systems. I bet there will soon be one on fonio.
- Food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute pens whole essay on how there should be public investment in moving agriculture from productivity gains to decarbonization without mentioning fonio.
- Well Nepal has orphan crops of its own and doesn’t give a fig for your fonio.
- Blogpost highlights the role of women in the cultivation and conservation of millets in Tamil Nadu.
- ISSD Africa video on the advantages of growing a diversity of crops, especially under climate change. Fonio, anyone?
- What does maize have to do with turtles? Gather round, children…
- The Cherokee Nation’s genebank is open for business. Maize available. No turtles.
- Long article on collecting, conserving and using crop wild relatives, including by Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Could fonio do with some diversity from its wild relatives? I suspect it’s not a huge priority, but maybe it will become one.
- It’s unclear how much diversity of orphan crops is in Japan’s high-tech genebank, but I bet it’s quite a bit. Fonio, I’m not so sure though. Maybe someone will tell me.
Nibbles: Eating to Extinction, Livestock Conservancy, Pastoral diversification, Donkeys, ICARDA, USDA, Native Seeds/SEARCH, Duragna, Baked bean bread, Kenosha Potato Project, Landrace marketing, Gene editing
- All the videos from the recent Eating to Extinction event in London celebrating food diversity.
- If you want to eat rare breeds or their products, the Livestock Conservancy has a website for you.
- ILRI policy brief on how pastoral systems can usefully diversify.
- The BBC rounds up the history of the domestication of the donkey without, alas, mentioning the Livestock Conservancy or pastoral diversification. Spoiler alert: ancient Roman donkeys were really big.
- NPR interviews the manager of the ICARDA genebank in Lebanon.
- Local Oregon paper visits the USDA genebank in Pullman.
- It’s the turn of the Native Seed/SEARCH genebank to feature in the news.
- Want to know what “duragna” is? This press release from Cornell will explain all. I think we included the original paper in a recent Brainfood, but I can’t be bothered checking. Anyway, trust me, it’s interesting. Spoiler alert: it has to do with cereal diversity.
- Brits told to grow more faba beans and use them to make bread. Census takers not available for comment.
- Fascinating project on the history of saffron cultivation in eastern England. Now that would spice up all that faba bean bread.
- The Kenosha Potato Project deconstructed to within an inch of its life by Modern Farmer. We’ve blogged about this innovative breeding project here before, have a look. Ah no, I just have, and in fact we haven’t, though we have blogged about William Whitson, an independent tuber breeder, who is however a long-time member of KPP.
- Meanwhile, in Peru, local potato landraces are finding a new market via chips/crisps. Pretty sure we’ve blogged about this too. We are so on the ball.
- Gene editing for conservation? Yes, why not? But nothing on crop and livestock species in this succinct explainer, alas.