- Special issue of Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences on food processing, “a critical variable in human economies and social and symbolic systems.” Looks like the editorial is open to all.
- Investigation of genetic diversity in Russian collections of raspberry and blue honeysuckle. Some of them are much richer than others.
- Solanum centrale, bush tucker: new microsatellites reveal diversity and polyploidy; and it benefits from arbuscular mycorrhiza, especially in low P soils.
- The Crop Intensification Program in Rwanda: a sustainability analysis. It isn’t.
- Wholesale replacement of lima bean (Phaseolus lunatus L.) landraces over the last 30 years in northeastern Campeche, Mexico. There was.
- Certification of agroforestry tree germplasm in Southern Africa: opportunities and challenges. Need a scheme based on the FAOs Quality Declared Seed (QDS) with truth-in-labelling, with 3 germplasm categories (audit, select and genetically improved) as a start.
- And speaking of trees … Silver fir stand productivity is enhanced when mixed with Norway spruce: evidence based on large-scale inventory data and a generic modelling approach. Diversity good for silver firs, no effect on Norway spruce.
- Genotypic variation and relationships between quality traits and trace elements in traditional and improved rice (Oryza sativa L.) genotypes. Traditional varieties have more.
Nibbles: SEARICE, R&D, Sustainable intensification, Biofortification, Chillies, Safe movement, Mangoes, Weeds, Berries, Blueberries, Cerrado
- SEARICE explains its approach to seed sovereignty and farmer participation.
- Nature on IFPRI’s report on agricultural R&D in Africa. Not pretty.
- Resilience Science on the UN Special Rapporteur’s sustainable intensification thing.
- The Gates Foundation is on a nutritional roll; most of yesterday’s posts are available from this round-up.
- New Mexico gets all protectionist about its chillies.
- IITA explains how it provides healthy germplasm. Various different interesting stories in there, stick with it.
- Farmer conservation power in India.
- How to control invasive species. Eat more weeds.
- Presentation on Trends in global nutrition and health: Local fruits and their potential importance for nutrition and health as seen at Pavlovsk berry meeting.
- Speaking of berries…
- The cerrado (and its crop wild relatives) is in trouble. We talked about this, weren’t you paying attention?
Religion, diet and nutrition
We tend not to set too much store by religion around these parts, so a letter in response ((Scroll down till you see A Mormon approach.)) to The Economist’s recent pieces on nutrition piqued our interest. It read, in part:
In the March issue of their magazine, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints reported on a food initiative which has taught many members to garden, even in small, urban spaces, and with whatever containers they can find. Started in 2009, these people have gone on to teach others in their communities how to increase their nutritional intake—and self-reliance—with just seeds, soil and sunlight.
Let me Google that for you. Better yet, having Googled it, let me fillet out the article in question and make it available all on its own. Turns out that not only are Mormons keen on urban and container gardening for diversity and nutrition, they’ve been so for quite a while. A former US secretary of Agriculture, Ezra Taft Benson, was President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and set out a very familiar vision of how to prepare for the Days of Tribulation:
Get together with others and seek permission to use a vacant lot for a garden, or rent a plot of ground and grow your gardens. Some elders quorums have done this as a quorum, and all who have participated have reaped the benefits of a vegetable and fruit harvest and the blessings of cooperation and family involvement. Many families have dug up lawn space for gardens.
That sounds like a modern manifesto to me. Of course, there’s an appeal to authority too:
President Brigham Young said, “If you are without bread, how much wisdom can you boast, and of what real utility are your talents, if you cannot procure for yourselves and save against a day of scarcity those substances designed to sustain your natural lives?”
One to ponder. Meanwhile, I wonder whether those members of the Mormon faith who heeded their presidents’ advice saw any impact on their nutrition?
Biofortified foods rolled out across Latin America and the Caribbean
Agro-Salud, “a multi-partner ‘biofortification’ program,” has announced on the CIAT blog that it is releasing new varieties of rice, maize and beans to poor communities in Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras and Nicaragua. The new crops are described as “nutritionally enhanced” and also “out-perform traditional crops in terms of disease resistance and yields”.
The new varieties add to more than 40 nutritionally-improved crops that Agro Salud and its partners have released across the region since 2007.
I wonder if they have had any impact on nutrition?
Agricultural diversity improves health
Here’s a turn-up for the books. A newspaper article headlined New farming practices grow healthier children actually delivers some specifics.
The article reports on a project called Soils, Food and Healthy Communities, a joint effort by Canada and Malawi, and I’m ashamed to say (or can I blame the project’s communications?) that I knew nothing about it.
The evidence of healthier children?
Ten years ago Joyce Mhoni, head of the Nutrition Rehabilitation Unit at Ekwendeni Hospital in the Mzimba district of northern Malawi, would have been caring for to up to 30 severely malnourished children at a time. Today, at the peak of the usually lean months between December and April, when farmers are waiting to harvest, the unit is empty, and in the whole of 2010 only 15 children were admitted, mostly from outside the hospital’s catchment area.
I know, it’s only anecdotal, but be patient. There’s lots more in the article, which explains that the changes stem from the SFHC project’s decision, around 2000, to open an Agricultural Office at the hospital.
[T]he project’s staff taught farmers how to grow different varieties of legumes such as soy beans, peanuts, and peas. They were encouraged to grow a deep-rooted variety of legume, such as pigeon pea, in the same field as a shallow-rooted variety like soy bean, a method known as inter-cropping.
Soy bean is high-yielding and a nutritious food source, while pigeon pea produces a large amount of leaves that can be dug into the soil to make an effective natural fertilizer.
Pigeon pea is also rather good to eat, but leave that aside. There’s lots more lovely human interest stuff in the article, and another one at the BBC, about the project’s profound impact on families: new houses, school fees, better health, a life without hunger. At which point, of course, the hard-to-please scientist asks for solid evidence in a peer-reviewed journal. Will this do?
There was an improvement over initial conditions of up to 0.6 in weight-for-age Z-score (WAZ; from -0.4 (SD 0.5) to 0.3 (SD 0.4)) for children in the longest involved villages, and an improvement over initial conditions of 0.8 in WAZ for children in the most intensely involved villages (from -0.6 (SD 0.4) to 0.2 (SD 0.4)).
And there’s more where that come from, which is here: Effects of a participatory agriculture and nutrition education project on child growth in northern Malawi. ((Bezner Kerr R, Berti PR, & Shumba L (2010). Effects of a participatory agriculture and nutrition education project on child growth in northern Malawi. Public health nutrition, 1-7 PMID: 21059284))
I wonder whether SFHC has considered going large and promoting other forms of agricultural and dietary diversity?