- Unusual uses for a gourd.
- CIAT says North Africa will suffer most from climate change. So it must be true.
- Food Festival in the Khasi-Jaintia Hills of Mawphlang in India.
- Forget the global poor and their hidden hunger. We’re not eating our fruit and veg either.
- Evangelinemay1 wants to know how to “bring back biodiversity to our agricultural crops“. Let’s all love-bomb her, shall we?
- Radix has mauka seeds! (He means anthocarps of Mirabilis expansa.)
- ILRI continues to decrease agrobiodiversity — of animal diseases.
Nibbles: Maasai, Arbutus, Yak, China, USA
- ILRI video on helping herders with that climate change thing.
- Nutritional composition of Strawberry tree fruits.
- The genetic history of the yak.
- Chinese food archaeology: noodles and fruits.
- Colonial food in early America.
Biofortified’s take on the biofortification conference
Over at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, Jeremy has been critical of information coming out of the First Global Conference on Biofortification. He wonders if the organizers and attendees were/are too focused on a techno-fix rather than on diverse diets as a solution. This being a conference on biofortification, we talked about biofortification a lot, and it could be argued that biofortification is a techno-fix, whether by breeding or biotechnology.
Ah, but you just know there’s a “however” coming up, don’t you. Thanks to Anastasia for a great summary of the recent biofortification jamboree.
Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Food security, Photography, Satoyama, Toxins, Aussie genebanks
- Legal niceties may help save Pavlovsk Experiment Station …
- … which says its cherries are doing just fine, thank you. Jeremy hard at work.
- Ecosystem Services and Food Security. One for later.
- Kew’s Garden Photographer competition closes soon. Surprise everyone, submit something edible.
- Satoyama Initiative explained.
- On top of everything else, climate change may lead to higher toxin levels in crops.
- Latest on the restructuring of Australia’s genebanks.
Save the date to watch Agriculture, Health and Nutrition linked
December 7th, just after noon on the east coast of the US, will see a live webcast of a seminar at IFPRI. The teaser lists five big names, and says three of them will speak. Here’s the pitch:
Agricultural policies influence the quantity and quality of foods farmers produce, as well as the portfolio of crops they grow and the production methods they use. Thus, agricultural policies have a clear impact on human health and nutrition. In turn, health and nutrition policies can affect agriculture by influencing whether farmers and their families are healthy and strong enough to do the labor required on their farms. Yet although they may share goals, professionals in agriculture, nutrition, and health rarely have opportunities to discuss areas of mutual interest, exploit synergies and pursue outcomes together that are beneficial to society.
The timing might be a tad awkward, but maybe we’ll try and organize something live of our own around a couple of cold ones. And we’ll be sure to let you know if we have a hashtag. ((If any of this is unintelligible, don’t worry about it for a moment.)) Other upcoming IFPRI seminars are listed here, in case you want to practice.