- Feeding the world with breadfruit.
- Feeding the world with ngali nut. Well, the Solomons.
- Feeding the world with sticky rice. Well, Laos.
- Threatened forest hotspots mapped, and discussed. Why is it we haven’t done this for agrobiodiversity?
- Man takes best friend to grave, old and very old.
Nibbles: Barley, Fellowship, Supplier, Malnutrition, choices, Rice and climate change
- “[A]n ancient barley grain”. Just the one. One only. From Neolithic England.
- Crawford Fund Fellowship “for an agricultural scientist from a selected group of developing countries whose work has shown significant potential”.
- New World Seeds & Tubers, a supplier thereof.
- Alternative remedies for late potato blight.
- Mild underweight a better indicator of childhood malnutrition than severe. Press release and paper.
- “Food or the environment? Mixed signals confuse farmers.” There has to be a choice?
- Indonesia sorts out its rice-adapted-to-climate-change problem.
Many recipes to cope with food production needs
It’s been a busy week or two for food and agricultural policy news, what with the Arab world supposedly ignited by high food prices and weighty documents elsewhere calling forth high-minded rhetoric and tosh in roughly equal measure. To be honest it doesn’t feel right to do more than offer our endless refrain: that there is no one-size-fits-all solution out there, and that diversity brings resilience at levels from the individual meal to the global food network. And to point to some thought-provoking items. To whit:
The Economist’s deeply cynical story How much do rich governments really worry about feeding the world? seems to hit all the right spots.
The UN’s Special Rapporteur on the right to food seems to hit all the spots you might have expected him to hit, buttering parsnips like nobody’s business.
And the European Union has, as usual come up with a very snappy acronym for a million euro project to tackle malnutrition in Africa: SUNRAY, short for Sustainable Nutrition Research for Africa in the Years to come. Here’s what they’ll be doing.
- WP1 optimises communication and coordination within the Consortium.
- WP2 maps current nutrition research activities in sub-Saharan Africa, and examines the operating environment.
- WP3 analyses the views of stakeholders.
- WP4 examines the impact of environmental changes on nutrition.
- WP5 builds consensus on research priorities through workshops in three African regions.
- WP6 develops a strategic framework for future research in the form of a roadmap.
- WP7 disseminates project outputs.
Nibbles: Cocoa, Fruit, Leek moth
- Would you pay more for a chocolate bar to speed democratic change?
- Why are Froot Loops cheaper than fruit? President Obama explains.
- Climate change hits Britain’s leek growers.
Nibbles: Prices; Nutrition, Rice
- Detailed look at food prices and crises.
- “[A] higher intake of fruits and vegetables is associated with a reduced risk of IHD [ischaemic heart disease] mortality. Whether this association is causal and, if so, the biological mechanism(s) by which fruits and vegetables operate to lower IHD risks remains unclear.” Who cares how it works.
- Higher rice productivity just “a phone call away,” it says here.