- Friday was International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Let one post on Indigenous Peoples and the Diversity of Food represent them all. (But isn’t that coffee in the photo?)
- And yesterday was 23 Thermidor, AKA Lentil Day, in the French Republican Calendar. In other news, “Every day of the French Republican Calendar was associated with a different plant, animal, agricultural tool, etc., both to replace the custom of saints’ days and to celebrate the agricultural and natural world.”
- Today brings notice of a contest to “showcase projects from around the globe that have bridged gaps between agriculture, food security, and nutrition”. Details from Secure Nutrition.
- Growing greens — even exotic kale — in Kibera, Nairobi, would surely be a worthy winner.
- Not so sure about the photo story of Combat farming in Afghanistan, (via Metafilter) which seems to be oblivious to the number one cash crop in those parts.
A diverse look at productivity
Take a look at the graphic up there and tell me what you see? If you’re anything like me, you’ll be a bit surprised. In this kind of “heat map” green is usually good and red is usually bad, but what on Earth is good across much of sub-Saharan Africa and Asia and bad just about everywhere else?
Yield — if you think about it properly.
A recent paper by Emily Cassidy and her colleagues at the University of Minnesota 1 got a lot of press recently focused on the claim that feeding more people a nutritionally sound diet would be a lot easier if we just ate lower on the food chain. That’s an argument that lots of people have made, backed up to varying degrees with good numbers. What’s different this time is that the numbers are a lot more rigorous and, in my opinion, a lot more accessible. That map above, for example, shows the calories delivered to the food system per calorie produced. In other words, crudely, the amount of human food as opposed to animal feed.
Obvious, when you think about it, that the number of people fed per hectare is surely a better measure of agricultural productivity than the simple yield. That’s what underpins the money quote:
We find that, given the current mix of crop uses, growing food exclusively for direct human consumption could, in principle, increase available food calories by as much as 70%, which could feed an additional 4 billion people (more than the projected 2–3 billion people arriving through population growth). Even small shifts in our allocation of crops to animal feed and biofuels could significantly increase global food availability, and could be an instrumental tool in meeting the challenges of ensuring global food security.
There are other eye-opening graphics in the paper, for example a ranking of the major crops based on calories delivered to the food system versus calories lost. As you can imagine, maize doesn’t do well at all. Nor does barley, because so much goes to feed. I highly recommend taking a look at the full paper, which is freely available.
Cassidy et al. are decidedly not calling for everyone to go vegan. For a start, that would leave a lot of grass and other forages uneaten and a lot of nutritional holes in the diet of many people. They are suggesting that the “problem” of feeding future global population may be easier to solve than currently imagined, if people shift their diet. The problem of how to help people shift their diet, they don’t address.
Nibbles: Hunger, Breeds, Jatropha, Value chains, Vegetables, Temperature, Quinoa
- The Lancet waxes optimistic on hunger and poverty goals.
- Korea keen to help compile information on African livestock.
- Is there nothing Jatropha cannot do? Now it’s a carbon sink.
- Fijian ginger and Ethiopian beans; two value chains explored in the latest New Agriculturalist.
- An International Symposium on Vegetables in August 2014, with lots of interest, but as it is under the ISHS you’ll have to pay to read about it.
- “Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant pests.” Ya don’t say.
- “Help a Bolivian farmer: Eat quinoa“. Now there’s a headline with attitude.
What’s eating India?
Resources Research undertook a labour of love to produce this graph. It shows, for 20 Indian states, roughly how much of pulses and cereals each tenth of the population eats each month. I urge you to go and read the full post for the details.
Bottom line: Of the 200 populations, 43 are “severely deficient” in cereals and pulses required per month.
The graph is based on data from national surveys of “Consumer Expenditure,” so I don’t know whether it includes food people grow rather than buy, but I doubt that makes much difference overall.
Makanaka makes lots of interesting points about the data, comparing the 2009-2010 survey with a similar one done five years before. Overall, this is a terrific example of open data allowing people to offer alternative interpretations to the standard line.
Nibbles: DIY entomophagy, Svalbard movie, Perennial crops, IPM
- Grow your own delicious bugs for snacks. I feel duty bound to point out that the snacks in question are flies, not bugs. And where’s my donut?
- This short film about the Svalbard seed vault is not nearly as scary as it’s poster image.
- FAO hosts an expert workshop on perennial crops, for three days in August.
- The ENDURE network – “diversifying crop protection” – says Danish farmers love Integrated Pest Management. And the Endure network.