Policy

January 17, 2019January 17, 2019

The meat and potatoes of the healthy diets debate

And here is the EAT-Lancet report in all its glory, as promised.

Give me a day or two to, ahem, digest it…

#EATLancet: Diet and food production must radically change to improve health and avoid potentially catastrophic damage to the planet @EATForum #foodcanfixit https://t.co/bcVFoSZNtm pic.twitter.com/lD5i0EOjA1

— The Lancet (@TheLancet) January 17, 2019

January 16, 2019

Nibbles: ICBA, Samoan bananas, Lost crops, Old chenopod, Tree seeds, Online course, Data viz, Olive polyculture

Crops on a saline drip.
A hero is collecting all the banana varieties of America Samoa.
Something similar, but in Arizona.
How to collect tree seeds, the right way.
Exceedingly old chenopod crop. A real Eastern Agricultural Complex outlier.
Feeding a Hungry Planet: The Online Course.
Strait is the way to data visualization.
Forget milk, it’s olives and honey.

January 16, 2019January 16, 2019

Open seeds

We’ve blogged a couple of times about the Open Source Seed Initiative. The first time was when Jeremy interviewed Jack Kloppenburg, whose idea it was, back in 2013. The second yielded this little gem:

“It’s almost like a haiku,” says Irwin Goldman a professor of horticulture at UW-Madison and plant breeder, who has released two of his carrot varieties under the OSSI. “It basically says these seeds are free to use in any way you want. They can’t be legally protected. Enjoy them.”

Well, it turns out there’s a German version as well, as well as a project in east Africa. That’s according to a new policy brief from CIRAD.

It’s not quite a haiku, but here’s how the approach is described by Selim Louafi and his co-authors:

This approach is distinct from the public domain, whereby anyone has free and open access to the seeds, with the inevitable risk of free appropriation. Conversely, the open source approach is based on viral effects (i.e. the same conditions apply for any subsequent use) and non-proprietary assets: it reverses the intellectual property rights rationale by introducing negotiated terms of access and use with the aim of keeping seeds in a protected commons.

Long may it prosper.

LATER: And no, it isn’t lost on me that the past three posts on open source seeds, seed sector innovation and extension services could all have been mashed up into one mega-post on sustainable seed systems. But I do have a day job. Anyone want to give it a go?

January 15, 2019January 15, 2019

What to do about extension services

Traditional extension does not always provide the most useful information to farmers

You don’t say. Anyway, that’s the first finding of a review of “nearly 50 randomised evaluations on the constraints to the productivity and profitability of smallholder farming” carried out over the past eight years by the Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative (ATAI) with support from the Gates Foundation. Here’s the second:

At the same time, training and information services can be critical in contexts where novel technologies are being promoted

So what can be done about it? Here’s the short version:

tailor information to individual farmers
use tools that make information easier to understand
leverage social networks
offer extensionists performance-based incentives
move beyond price information

If you want to hear it from the horse’s mouth, try this:

What did 50 RCTs teach us about agricultural extension services?
1. Traditional extension is often useless
2. Training and information is particularly important where novel technologies are being promoted
3. Accessible and customised information helps change behaviour
(1/3)

— Adam Kessler (@apkessler) January 14, 2019

Is the game worth the candle? Well…

…we…acknowledge that the productive potential of better information dissemination is fundamentally limited by the value of the content being disseminated, and many of these positive results are associated with relatively small improvements in farmer welfare.

So maybe not. What strikes me, though, is that the underlying paradigm is still one-way flow, i.e. FROM extentionists TO farmers. In the context of management of agricultural biodiversity, I’d actually like to see more information going the other way.

January 14, 2019January 12, 2019

Brainfood: Coca phylogeny, Potato taste & nutrition & resistance, CC & nutrition, Light & nutrition, Remote poverty, Spicy toms, Input subsidies, Broilerocene, European livestock then & now, Bean domestication, Peach domestication, Machine conservation, Habitat fragmentation, Conservation planning, Taxidermy, Wheat diversity, Livestock GS

Phylogenetic inference in section Archerythroxylum informs taxonomy, biogeography, and the domestication of coca (Erythroxylum species). Morphology is not enough.
Improving Flavor to Increase Consumption. Yield is not enough.
The Nutritional Contribution of Potato Varietal Diversity in Andean Food Systems: a Case Study. Yield is not enough.
Stacking three late blight resistance genes from wild species directly into African highland potato varieties confers complete field resistance to local blight races. One resistance gene is not enough.
Income growth and climate change effects on global nutrition security to mid-century. Calories will not be enough.
Urbanization and Child Nutritional Outcomes. Urbanization is enough.
Socioecologically informed use of remote sensing data to predict rural household poverty. Night light is not enough.
Capsaicinoids: Pungency beyond Capsicum. Peppers and tomatoes are not enough.
The impact of agricultural input subsidies on food and nutrition security: a systematic review. The data are not enough.
The broiler chicken as a signal of a human reconfigured biosphere. The broiler is enough.
Pre-Roman improvements to agricultural production: Evidence from livestock husbandry in late prehistoric Italy. The Romans were not enough.
Optimizing ex situ genetic resource collections for European livestock conservation. One genebank is not enough.
Does the Genomic Landscape of Species Divergence in Phaseolus Beans Coerce Parallel Signatures of Adaptation and Domestication? One genome is enough.
Genome re-sequencing reveals the evolutionary history of peach fruit edibility. Human selection was not enough.
Predicting plant conservation priorities on a global scale. This black box is enough.
Is habitat fragmentation bad for biodiversity? Small patches may be enough.
Synergies between the key biodiversity area and systematic conservation planning approaches. One conservation approach is not enough.
Capturing goats: documenting two hundred years of mitochondrial DNA diversity among goat populations from Britain and Ireland. Stuffed goats are enough.
Decline in climate resilience of European wheat. The current varieties are not enough.
Harnessing genomic information for livestock improvement. Genomic selection was going to be enough.