- Farming for balanced nutrition: an agricultural approach to addressing micronutrient deficiency among the vulnerable poor in Africa. Dietary diversity is a good idea for many reasons.
- Cultivar characterization of Aegean olive oils with respect to their volatile compounds. Only two varieties, and they do differ.
- Beef Authentication and Retrospective Dietary Verification Using Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis of Bovine Muscle and Tail Hair. Back40 has an explanation of why this is more important than all the certification schemes in the world.
- Promoting native trees in shade coffee plantations of southern India: comparison of growth rates with the exotic Grevillea robusta. Some native species might be able to compete, more research needed.
- Regeneration of Vitellaria paradoxa and Parkia biglobosa in a parkland in Southern Burkina Faso. Vitellaria doing better, possibly because farmers are overharvesting Parkia seeds.
- Defining the poor by the rural communities of Burkina Faso: implications for the development of sustainable parkland management. It’s complicated.
- Does soil biota benefit from organic farming in complex vs. simple landscapes? Organic farming increases weed diversity. No word on what it does for birds, but…
- Species richness and composition of bird communities in various field margins of Poland. Some types of field margins are better than others. No word on what they do for weeds.
Nibbles: Pigeonpea, Agrobiodiversity book, Agroforestry
- USC promotes pigeonpeas. And why not.
- “Agrobiodiversity Management for Food Security: A Critical Review” by J M Lenné and D Wood hits newsstands.
- How ICRAF intends to stop agroforestry being marginalized in the new CGIAR. Their words (more or less), not mine.
Nibbles: ABS in ITPGRFA, Wheat Yield Consortium, Plasticity and climate change, Sustainable intensification, Early agriculture
- Outstanding Issues on ABS under the Multilateral System – a background study paper. Wait, there’s outstanding issues?
- Wheat geeks meet.
- Plastic plants will cope with climate change. Not what you think.
- Nice write-up of the UK Foresight Food and Farming Futures report on Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture in Africa from Farming First.
- First farmers not as productive as last foragers. One wonders why they bothered.
Nibbles: Micronutrients, Population, Opium, Nixtamalization, Chocolate, Seed swap, Dog domestication, Meeting, Biofuel failure, Mesquite
- “Organic management practices appear to result in elevated levels of grain micronutrient concentration.” By no means the whole story.
- Tom too takes The Economist to task.
- Afghanistan’s opium growers. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
- Nixtamalization for the rest of us. More than you could ever want to know. Rye tortillas!
- Chocolate began with leftover beer? Seems unlikely.
- Take the fight to the monster’s lair. Swap seeds in Brussels. h/t Patrick.
- Dogs or dholes? Yeah I didn’t know what they were either.
- There was a workshop on “Seed System and Climate Change” in Bhutan a month ago.
- Big biofuel project in Tanzania bites the dust. And the land they “leased,” what happened to that?
- Ancient grinding holes. Might mesquite be another edible never domesticated?
The Third Way
Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis?
Via.