- Breeding maize for high yields limits its plasticity.
- “The rich ate fine, floured wheat bread. But if you were poor you cut your teeth on rye and black bread.”
- USA, MLS and ITPGRFA.
- Rethinking conservation. Again.
- Content-free article on growing rice in slightly salty water.
- BBC catches up with coffee rust.
- Making animal feed sustainable. Easier said than done.
The way ahead on nutrition?
While waiting for agriculture to do that transformation thing, it may be worthwhile reading the latest Global Nutrition Report. Although some metrics are moving in the wrong direction, I found some comfort in this observation:
…‘triple duty actions’ which tackle malnutrition and other development challenges could yield multiple benefits across the SDGs. For example, diversification of food production landscapes can provide multiple benefits by: ensuring the basis of a nutritious food supply essential to address undernutrition and prevent diet-related NCDs; enabling the selection of micronutrient-rich crops with ecosystem benefits; and, if the focus is on women in food production, empowering women to become innovative food value chain entrepreneurs while minimising work and time burden.
So what’s stopping us?
Brainfood: Finger millet genotyping, Spanish apple diversity, Wheat value chains
- Development of SSR Markers and Their Use in Studying Genetic Diversity and Population of Finger Millet (Eleusine coracana L. Gaertn.). “This study may form the basis for a finger millet breeding and improvement program.” My emphasis.
- Analysis of the genetic diversity and structure of the Spanish apple genetic resources suggests the existence of an Iberian genepool. Iberian material different to international and commercial stuff.
- Sustainability Performance of Food Chains: Linking Biodiversity and Nutritional Value in Italian Wheat-to-Bread Chains. We have indicators!
Nibbles: Super-fruit, Wheat, CWR toolkit
- I’ve got your next five superfoods right here.
- Weakened wheats make grain go further.
- Everybody needs an interactive toolkit for crop wild relative conservation.
Unravelling the role of biodiversity in the food-health nexus
Regarding the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) report Unravelling the Food–Health Nexus, which we mentioned a couple of days ago, I hear that there was surprise in some quarters that biodiversity didn’t get more of a mention in the executive summary. In particular, high-placed sources are saying they would have preferred it to be at least mentioned under the first leverage point:
Leverage point 1: PROMOTING FOOD SYSTEMS THINKING. Food systems thinking must be promoted at all levels, i.e., we must systematically bring to light the multiple connections between different health impacts, between human health and ecosystem health, between food, health, poverty, and climate change, and between social and environmental sustainability. Only when health risks are viewed in their entirety, across the food system and on a global scale, can we adequately assess the priorities, risks, and trade-offs underpinning our food systems, e.g., the provision of low-cost food versus systematic food insecurity, poverty conditions, and environmental fallout of the industrial model. All of this has profound implications for the way that knowledge is developed and deployed in our societies, requiring a shift toward interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in a range of contexts (e.g., new ways of assessing risks; changes in the way that university and school curricula are structured). Concepts such as “sustainable diets” and “planetary health” help to promote holistic scientific discussions and to pave the way for integrated policy approaches. Food systems thinking can also be encouraged on a smaller scale through initiatives that reconnect people with the food they eat (e.g., community shared agriculture, school vegetable gardens).
Apparently, though, when Prof. Molly Anderson presented the report, she described this as an oversight. If you were involved in any of this, and would like to tell us more, please do.