- The 2nd Global Conference on Agriculture, Food Security and Climate Change “Hunger for Action” (Hanoi, Vietnam).
- Barder and Kinder Debate London Health Summit and Food Security Policy, so we don’t have to!
- A review of a review of restoration ecology for ecosystem services. Ag?
- The Seed Underground: listen to a radio interview with US author Janisse Ray. Ag!
- Or, if that fails to excite, listen to Save the axolotl! Um, sure, but why? and tell us whether there’s any ag in that.
- There’s definitely ag in More than Honey, a new documentary movie.
- FDA slaps down misleading claims of fortification (in chocolate syrup)
- Cassava mosaic and banana bacterial wilt add to the food security woes of DR Congo.
- Rice growers get all the goodies, complain Sri Lankan vegetable growers.
- Ivorian agricultural scientists to open access to their research results.
- A backyard breeder documents his search for a better bean.
Making money from senile coconuts
My ignorance knows no bounds, I’m pleased to say. Coconut wood, for example: I had no idea it was of any value. But a recent note alerted the Google coconut group to news of a project, funded by Australia, to develop “high quality veneer and veneer products from senile coconut trees in some Pacific island countries”.
Senile is their term, obviously, not mine. I’m far too sensitive to think that just because a coconut palm is 70 years old it is senile. The fact is, however, that old coconuts are not as prolific as youngsters, and may be worth more as timber than as a source of nuts. Certainly the wood looks very pretty, and Carey Smoot, the bloke who developed the industry sounds like quite a card.
What interested me about the story was the fuss it stirred up among coconut nuts. The big worry is how the smallholders who rely on coconuts as the foundation of their livelihoods would respond to buyers with big bucks. Top dollar now for an old tree might be irresistible; would the sellers replant? If not, what will they do when they’ve spent the cash? And, of course, are there other products, besides timber and commodity-priced coconuts, that would boost their incomes sustainably?
Indeed, people called the sustainability of the entire senile coconut timber project into question, and it was a comment in that discussion that really caught my eye.
it goes without saying of course that you DO NOT take more trees than can re grow sustainably otherwise you cut your throat so to speak … and deforestation of coconuts could be irreversible.
Actually, taking more trees than can regrow is exactly what you do do, if you are a normal, for-profit economic entity, especially when the growth rate of the trees is lower than the discount rate you use to decide among alternative investments. The point was made ages ago, largely in relation to fisheries, but is still not widely appreciated. In fact, the role of the discount rate in determining economic behavior is pretty much under-appreciated everywhere.
If you’ve got a great big gob of capital waiting to be put to work, you chop down and convert all the senile coconut palms you can, until that’s no longer profitable, and then you invest your much larger chunk of capital in something equally unsustainable, like whaling. Or intensively cultivated farmland.
Nibbles: Drought, Vegetable talks, Bees, Communications, Resilience, Fungi, Breadfruit tools, Taxonomy, Orphan crops, ICARDA
- The Farnsworth Professor of International Agricultural Policy (Emeritus) and Deputy Director, Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University talks about the drought on his Iowa farm.
- While Ted offers 11 talks on the transformative power of vegetables.
- A new use for urban bees; protecting the lead on church roofs.
- “Agricultural researchers in developing countries are keen to communicate their research …” Scidev.net communicates.
- Growing a high-value crop instead of a staple is not resilience.
- Growing mushrooms in a laundry basket might well be.
- Growing breadfruit absolutely requires some simple processing tools if it is to be.
- Speaking of growth, Jeremy abuses his position of power to direct you to Eight Fallacies about Growth
- HarvestChoice grapples with the nomenklatura problem; which genius came up with SPAM?
- The Christian Science Monitor reports that orphan crops will be the saviour of African agriculture. Again.
- ABC (Oz) fears that war will destroy the ICARDA genebank, forgetting all about that Doomsday vault.
Agriculture and Nutrition: why can’t we all just get along?
The premise that the agriculture sector should also be a vehicle for improved nutrition is intuitive, but this sector often delivers neither good nutrition nor food security to the most vulnerable in the population.
IFPRI lays some cards on the table, from a study of Zambia.
Key lessons for improved intersectoral implementation include the role of advocacy in framing the problem in context and highlighting mutual gains for different sectors, to create the political will and working space for nutrition action; the importance of organizational arrangements, including convening or coordinating bodies with multisectoral credibility to facilitate mobilizing and resourcing power; and the importance of building not only technical but also strategic capacity to manage multisectoral relationships for improved nutrition outcomes. Ultimately, these solutions will have to be tailored to country contexts.
Nibbles: Genebanks, Grasses, Traditional Diets, Cuba, Hominid diets, Drought, Polluted bison, Chinese research, Turkeys
- Luigi thumps his tub, again: genebanks are important.
- Studiously avoiding turf-war truisms, grass species exhibit diverse drought tolerance.
- “Honor the Gift of Food,” to diversify diet in line with ancient practices.
- “I do not believe any president in the world has been so intimately involved with the problem of food production is his country, or with such paltry results.” You’ll never guess who. Or what his brother is up to.
- “The problem is not so much the drought but our over-reliance on this single crop.” Diversify, young person.
- Cattle genes make for smaller bison.
- Chinese money makes for new ag research station in Mali.
- Give thanks: turkeys domesticated 1000 years earlier than previously thought.