- Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change? Nature-based solutions need to be diversity-based. Let’s look at some example, shall we? Buckle up…
- The productive performance of intercropping. Meta-analysis shows intercropping leads to more land sparing and more protein compared to monoculture.
- Sparing or expanding? The effects of agricultural yields on farm expansion and deforestation in the tropics. Ouch, increasing yield results more often in higher deforestation than lower. If only they had gone for intercropping…
- Crop mixtures outperform rotations and landscape mosaics in regulation of two fungal wheat pathogens: a simulation study. …or crop mixtures.
- Intensified rice production negatively impacts plant biodiversity, diet, lifestyle and quality of life: transdisciplinary and gendered research in the Middle Senegal River Valley. And just to be clear, agricultural expansion can be bad for both farmers and the environment.
- Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions. Being able to charge rent is the main driver of the move away from shifting cultivation, but the environmental results depend on what system replaces it.
- Contribution of the biodiversity of edible plants to the diet and nutritional status of women in a Zapotec communities of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the older, less educated housewives that are more nature-based, and all the better for it.
- Six Underutilized Grain Crops for Food and Nutrition in China. That would be barley, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, foxtail millet, oat, and sorghum, which would certainly make a nature-based breakfast of champions.
- Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector. Growing traditional crops in the Andes may be less profitable, but it is more resilient to climate change. Unclear which of the two options is more nature-based, though. And has anyone told China?
- Opportunities and Challenges of Indigenous Food Plant Farmers in Integrating into Agri-Food Value Chains in Cape Town. To take advantage of nature-based solutions in South Africa, you have to know about local nature.
- Community Seedbanks in Uganda: Fostering Access to Genetic Diversity and Its Conservation. More research is needed to figure out how community seedbanks can be at their nature-based best.
Nibbles: Fonio commercialization, Naked barley, Food books, Ag decarbonization, Nepal NUS, Millets & women, Crop diversity video, Maize god, Cherokee genebank, CWR, Japan genebank
- A Nigerian company is pushing fonio as the next global super-food. What could possibly go wrong?
- Personally, I think naked barley has a better chance.
- Humanities scholars recommend their favourite new books on food systems. I bet there will soon be one on fonio.
- Food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute pens whole essay on how there should be public investment in moving agriculture from productivity gains to decarbonization without mentioning fonio.
- Well Nepal has orphan crops of its own and doesn’t give a fig for your fonio.
- Blogpost highlights the role of women in the cultivation and conservation of millets in Tamil Nadu.
- ISSD Africa video on the advantages of growing a diversity of crops, especially under climate change. Fonio, anyone?
- What does maize have to do with turtles? Gather round, children…
- The Cherokee Nation’s genebank is open for business. Maize available. No turtles.
- Long article on collecting, conserving and using crop wild relatives, including by Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Could fonio do with some diversity from its wild relatives? I suspect it’s not a huge priority, but maybe it will become one.
- It’s unclear how much diversity of orphan crops is in Japan’s high-tech genebank, but I bet it’s quite a bit. Fonio, I’m not so sure though. Maybe someone will tell me.
Brainfood: Sustainable diets, Resilient food system, IK in food systems double, Herbarium double, Ag research priorities, Fruits & vegetables, Cryopreservation, Diverse diets, Gene editing orphan crops, Ag revolution 4.0, Diversification, Monoculture, Agroecology, Regenerative ag, Plant health, Svalbard, Seed banking theory, Comms double
- Interventions for sourcing EAT-Lancet diets within national agricultural areas: A global analysis. Half the world’s population can eat healthily off the land in their own country, and 95% could.
- Reframing the local–global food systems debate through a resilience lens. Yeah, but there’s more to resilience than local vs global.
- Indigenous knowledge is key to sustainable food systems. Local people know all about sustainability and resilience.
- Global principles in local traditional knowledge: A review of forage plant-livestock-herder interactions. Yes, even — especially? — pastoral people.
- Using botanical resources to select wild forage legumes for domestication in temperate grassland agricultural systems. Not that said local people might not need a little help…
- The herbarium of the future. …for example from the herbarium of the future. Which actually sounds a lot like the genebank of the future.
- Multidimensional impacts from international agricultural research: Implications for research priorities. You want income growth? Invest in fruit and vegetables research and development. You want anything else? Cereals.
- Safeguarding and Using Fruit and Vegetable Biodiversity. Somebody mention fruit and vegetable R&D? Here’s how to start. Spoiler alert: the genebank of the future…
- In Vitro Conservation through Slow Growth Storage Technique of Fruit Species: An Overview of the Last 10 Years. …will need to be into cryo.
- Does the high dietary diversity score predict dietary micronutrients adequacy in children under 5 years old? A systematic review. This is why we need fruits and vegetables. But to eat them, not just to grow lots of them. How many of these kids are on the EAT-Lancet diet anyway?
- Integrating genomics and genome editing for orphan crop improvement: a bridge between orphan crops and modern agriculture system. And lots of fruits and vegetables are so-called orphan, and might need a helping hand, I suppose.
- The old, the new, or the old made new? Everyday counter-narratives of the so-called fourth agricultural revolution. A helping hand from technology you mean? Maybe, but best to mistrust grand narratives.
- Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Adopting orphan crops can be route to farming system diversification, which can be good for both yields and biodiversity. How’s that for a grand narrative?
- Rapid transgenerational adaptation in response to intercropping reduces competition. Staple crops bred are adapted to monoculture? Not necessarily.
- Agroecology in the North: Centering Indigenous food sovereignty and land stewardship in agriculture “frontiers”. All this diversification is beginning to sound a lot like some kind of agroecology. Even in the Global North. And I mean very North.
- Regenerative food systems and the conservation of change. Ok, but agroecology is not about the practices employed, but rather how the system is organized. Always good to occasionally step back and theorize.
- Sustainable management of transboundary pests requires holistic and inclusive solutions. None of the above is going to work if we’re knee-deep in pests.
- The eternal return: Imagining security futures at the Doomsday Vault. Apocalypse. Hope. Escape. No grander narrative than that for the most iconic genebank of the present.
- Carrier Seeds: A Cultural Analysis of Care and Conflict in Four Seed Banking Practices. Genebanks (maybe even Svalbard?) conserve more than just seeds: the theory and the practice deconstructed.
- Why facts don’t change minds: Insights from cognitive science for the improved communication of conservation research. Ok, but how to communicate all the above for maximum impact? Spoiler alert: forget about disseminating scientific facts widely to change individual minds. Instead, target the behaviour of strategic groups through values and emotions…
- Spread the word: Sharing information on social media can stabilize conservation funding and improve ecological outcomes. …using social media. Wait, does that mean I have to TikTok all this stuff now?
Nibbles: Fancy fungus, Fancy CWR book, Fancy dataset, Fancy food, Fancy wheat collection, Fancy diet, Fancy seeds, Fancy agriculture
- Symbiotic fungus can help plants and detoxify methylmercury.
- Very attractive book on the wild tomatoes of Peru. I wonder if any of them eat heavy metals.
- There’s a new dataset on the world’s terrestrial ecosystems. I’d like to know which one has the most crop wild relative species per unit area. Has anyone done that calculation? They must have.
- Iran sets up a saffron genebank. Could have sworn they already had one.
- The Natural History Museum digs up some old wheat samples, the BBC goes a bit crazy with it.
- Paleolithic diets included plants. Maybe not wheat or saffron though.
- Community seedbanks are all the rage in Odisha.
- Seeds bring UK and South Africa closer together. Seeds in seedbanks. Not community seedbanks, perhaps, but one can hope.
- Can any of the above make agriculture any more nutrition-sensitive? I’d like to think yes. Maybe except for the mercury-eating fungus, though you never know…
Brainfood: Genetic erosion, Ecosystem services, Cereal mixtures, Natural enemies, Soil microbiome double
- Genetic diversity loss in the Anthropocene. Don’t get excited, I don’t think the method translates to cultivated species, but fancy maths says we’ve lost on average 10% of the genetic diversity within species.
- A graphical causal model for resolving species identity effects and biodiversity–ecosystem function correlations. Yeah, but don’t forget that species level diversity is important too. Or rather, diversity of functional traits among species.
- Cereal species mixtures: an ancient practice with potential for climate resilience. A review. Species level diversity in the same farmer’s field is being forgotten, and that’s bad.
- Microbiomes in agroecosystem: Diversity, function and assembly mechanisms. Even soil microbial diversity is important…
- Association analyses of host genetics, root-colonizing microbes, and plant phenotypes under different nitrogen conditions in maize. …but the effects of soil microbial diversity can get quite complicated, and interact with the genetic diversity of crop plants. Which we may or may not have lost an average 10% of.
- Direct and indirect effects of management and landscape on biological pest control and crop pest infestation in apple orchards. Yeah, but species diversity can be bad too.