Category: Nutrition

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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.

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Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Food security, Photography, Satoyama, Toxins, Aussie genebanks

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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. 1 Other upcoming IFPRI seminars are listed here, in case you want to practice.

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Where are the variety-level food composition data?

FAO has just announced the publication of Composition of Selected Foods from West Africa.

The table includes 173 foods and 30 components. It is mainly a compilation of data from other food composition tables, theses and the scientific literature. It is one of the first regional food composition tables not only including data on commonly consumed raw foods but also cooked foods and on food biodiversity, i.e. data on variety level and on underutilized foods.

Well, that is all true as far as it goes, but I’m afraid it doesn’t really go very far. There are indeed data on things like fonio and baobab leaves in the table, which is very welcome. But the variety-level data are very limited, with maybe a dozen pearl millet and a few maize entries. Still a lot of work to be done there. Interestingly, the pearl millet varieties all have ikmp numbers (like ikmp-5), which suggests that they are selections made in Burkina Faso by INERA (Institut de l’Environnement et de Recherches Agricoles).