Policy

February 8, 2014February 8, 2014

Let Buck Marshall feed you

Whatever you think about Big Ag, I’m willing to bet you’ll agree that the new comedy series Farmed and Dangerous is pretty funny. Very clever of Chipotle Mexican Grill, a chain of holier-than-thou but hip Mexican-themed restaurants, to go the satire route to advertise their agroecology and locavore credentials. There’s even the now admittedly de rigueur parody Twitter account. When can we expect McDonalds to follow suit? Or Greenpeace, for that matter.

Did you know that only 50% of animals are used for meat? The rest are for soaps, candles, and leather… sounds like a Friday night to me!

— Buck Marshall (@BuckMarshall) February 7, 2014

February 3, 2014February 4, 2014

Brainfood: Cucumber diversity, Micronutrients in Africa, Natural enemies, Ag expansion, Food security & trade, Chinese forages, Frafra potato, Rayada rice, Persea agroforestry, European oats, Agrobiodiversity & health

A genomic variation map provides insights into the genetic basis of cucumber domestication and diversity. Four geographic groups, bottleneck not too bad. Opportunity for breeding for better nutritional value. But I suspect that’s a low bar.
Dietary mineral supplies in Africa. Zn seems to be the lowest hanging fruit, as it were. I wonder if above’s super-cucumbers would help.
Mechanisms for flowering plants to benefit arthropod natural enemies of insect pests: Prospects for enhanced use in agriculture. If you chose the right plants to plant, you can boost biological control of insect pests on farms.
Agricultural expansion and its impacts on tropical nature. Roads will lead to increased conversion of natural ecosystems to agriculture in South America and Sub-Saharan Africa. Sustainable intensification is the answer.
From Food Insufficiency towards Trade Dependency: A Historical Analysis of Global Food Availability. If most of us have more food now, it’s because of trade.
Technical challenges in evaluating southern China’s forage germplasm resources. Nothing they can’t handle, clearly.
Sustaining Frafra potato (Solenostemon rotundifolius Poir.) in the food chain; current opportunities in Ghana. Better varieties and processing. Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah, in every single paper on neglected crops.
Rayada specialty: the forgotten resource of elite features of rice. It’s a weird variant of deepwater rice from Bangladesh with possible enhanced stress tolerance due to longer root system.
Persea schiedeana: A High Oil “Cinderella Species” Fruit with Potential for Tropical Agroforestry Systems. Superior genotypes of this neglected avocado relative identified in fairs in Mexican region, and targeted for vegetative propagation and participatory breeding.
Quality characteristics of European avena genetic resources collections. The modern varieties are better, but that doesn’t mean the old ones are useless.
Nutrient Intake, Morbidity and Nutritional Status of Preschool Children are Influenced by Agricultural and Dietary Diversity in Western Kenya. Low food variety is associated with stunting. Kinda sorta.

January 29, 2014January 29, 2014

Nibbles: Not just yield, Nutrition infographic, Kenya tea, Tree domestication, Golden Rice talk, iRNA, Urban ag, Indian homegardens, Chocolate pix

Ann Tutwiler, DG of Bioversity, on why we have to solve a quadratic equation of food security now. But is it 7,000 edible plant species, or 12,000? h/t Nancy Castaldo
Go to page 9 for a cool infographic on nutrition which kinda illustrates that. But really, what a palaver to find it. Which actually I did via Twitter.
Quadratic? More like non-linear para-differential equations. Or one of those weird things out of chaos theory.
You can bet ICRAF think one solution to that equation involves the domestication of fruit trees.
Is Golden Rice another solution? There’s a debate later tonight that might help you decide.
And while we’re dealing with gene jockeys, apparently RNAi is the Next Big Thing.
Community, ecosystems, poverty reduction; urban agriculture can do it all. And Dyno Keating, DG of AVRDC, would probably agree.
And here’s a big PDF from the Centre for Indian Knowledge Systems to show you exactly how. Who needs equations?
Fed up with maths? Cacao, bean to bar, in photos.

January 28, 2014January 28, 2014

Nibbles: Water buffalo, Beans, Rhizowen, Fisheries, Frankincence, Gender and gender, US CWR, Cropland, Forests and food security

Today’s genome of passing interest, the water buffalo, less than two years after it was promised.
Saluting the true amateurs, on bean and tuberous diversity.
Unconsidered benefits of capture fisheries — except for the captured fish, I suppose.
Eleven months early, AoBblog links to a new paper on how to best to tap frankincense.
Not to be outdone, Modern Farmer relates how maple syrup could be industrialised as a row crop. H/t Metafilter.
An e-learning course on Gender in Agriculture.
Which is unlikely to please Ed Carr, author of Gender and adaptation: Time to do it differently.
US inventories its crop wild relatives.
Demand for cropland will increase.
Which is bad for forests, which are good for food security, but not as much as they could be.

January 27, 2014May 3, 2018

Nibbles: Vietnam ag, Sacred places, GWAS sarcasm, Eating insects, IDS course, Jungle fever, Poverty lecture

Agriculture in Vietnam: rice down, coffee up. I wonder if the two may be related?
Interactive online atlas of sacred lands.
The Allium takes a pot shot at the gene jockeys.
“It’s all about convincing people to take the first bite.” Oh, and the second.
But will insects feature in this professional short course on nutrition from IDS?
SE Asian rainforest as managed as the Amazon?
Prof. Sen’s poverty lecture at LSE.