- Contribution of pollinator-mediated crops to nutrients in the human food supply. 90% of Vitamin C for a start.
- Foraging behavior of Alberes cattle in a Mediterranean forest ecosystem. It’s a semi-feral breed in NE Spain and its foraging behaviour may well decrease the risk of fires.
- Assessing the impact of the SASA/CASREN technology interventions in the sweet potato-pig production systems in Zitong County (Sichuan, China). All well and good but in this day and age one would expect some exploration of the sustainability of the interventions.
- Proposal for a Kava Quality Standardization Code. Very much needed because poor quality was probably responsible for examples of liver toxicity in the past. This is how to avoid that in the future.
- Clipping stimulates productivity but not diversity in improved and semi-natural pastures in temperate Japan. Semi-natural pastures are more diverse than improved pastures, and can be reasonably productive. So there.
- Pollen flows within and between rice and millet fields in relation to farmer variety development in The Gambia. Depends on breeding system. Likely higher within fields than between. Still no cure for cancer.
- Land, landlords and sustainable livelihoods: The impact of agrarian reform on a coconut hacienda in the Philippines. It seems to be mainly in the mind.
- Genetic divergence is not the same as phenotypic divergence. It isn’t? I’ll alert the media.
- Scope economies and technical efficiency of cocoa agroforesty systems in Ghana. Multi-crop cocoa farms are better, in multiple ways.
- Gene flow increases fitness at the warm edge of a species’ range. Outcrossing between edge populations better for living on the edge than outcrossing within edge populations, outcrossing with a center population or selfing. For a Californian annual anyway. Interesting consequences for in situ CWR conservation, in particular in context of re-introductions. Do we worry too much about “genetic pollution”?
Nibbles: Cuba, India, Kansas, Amazonia, Rice, Fonio, Rare breed
- A Cuban tells us what he thinks is wrong with Cuban agriculture.
- Rahul Goswami has two long, thoughtful articles, on how India’s next five year plan is not realistic about either food or urbanisation.
- And what’s worse in the US today, drought, or heat? Do we have to choose?
- Less than 1% of Amazonia is made of Terra Preta. Is that enough? I dunno, how about you?
- Wanna buy some rice? I wonder if African rice, heirlooms and endophytes will get a look-in.
- Better bread from minor African grains. Digitaria, that is.
- Dairy Shorthorn in trouble in the UK.
Food Vendor films
IRIN, “a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,” has launched a new series of short films.
The Food Vendor tells the story of staple foods in different countries around the world and sheds light on the problems faced by the world’s poor in light of rising food prices.
I watched the first one, on lentils in Nepal, and found it rather tasty, so I thought I would share it here. Alas, unless I’m missing a trick, that does not seem possible. I can download it alright, and share the link on other sites, but I cannot seem to embed the movie here. Too bad, I suppose.
And if you’re into artisanal food processing, just look at the way the woman carefully wet-grinds the lentils at the start of the film.
Nibbles: Food Deserts, Garlics, Communication, Bee breeding, Millets, Sweet potatoes, Visualizing herbaria, Medieval beer
- The Economist discovers food deserts. Money quote: “some Americans simply do not care to eat a balanced diet, while others, increasingly, cannot afford to”.
- William Woys Weaver on garlics, and America, and garlic in America.
- Agricultural Communication for Development conference. Sure. But 12 days long?
- Breeding a better bee. And why not?
- Kenya Agricultural research Institute to release three new high-yielding finger millets.
- Too many sweet potato seedlings. What’s a poor breeder to do?
- A visual history of California botanizing.
- Ah, to have lived at a time when a man got most of his calories from beer! No, wait…
If they can do it in LA, why not in Kibera?
I’m gobsmacked by something that’s happening in Los Angeles. Here’s the idea:
Document your food purchases. Every 2 weeks, we’ll be asking you to record your purchases of a different food type. We’ll send you an email to let you know what it is. So, during the fortnight that the food type is bananas, every time you buy a banana, whether you’re at the supermarket, filling up at a petrol station, or grabbing breakfast to go at a coffee shop, we want you to whip out your phone, open Foodprint LA: Bananas in Kullect, ((That’s a groovy app. Ed.)) take a quick photo of your banana(s), enter the price, choose from a list of vendors, and contribute your individual banana purchase data to help create a bigger picture of the Los Angeles banana-scape. Repeat step 3 as many times as you buy bananas during that two-week banana-data Kullection.
Why?
We’ll take the data (anonymised, of course), analyse it for patterns and insights, and create data visualisations — infographics, maps, and charts — that we can share with everyone who wants to understand the city’s foodscape a little bit better.
The resulting data won’t replace a rigorous foodshed study in the city’s planning process, of course. Nonetheless, we think that crowd-sourcing the data-gathering process and then mining the resulting information to tell stories and ask new questions will be a fun way to build awareness and encourage conversation about where the Los Angeles’ food actually comes from.
That has to be doable in Kibera, or anywhere that people are struggling to access good food. And think of the insights. My head is spinning …