- First of all, I need a cup of coffee.
- Stop Press: Britain’s orchards neglected. Prince Charles to be called in to help?
- Eating the wild, in San Francisco and San Diego.
- IFAD on what African farmers need: infrastructure, insurance, investment. Apparently.
- Harvesting sesame in Greece: The video.
- Filipinos make wine from Hawaiian traditional food. Strange the Hawaiians hadn’t thought of that. But perhaps they did.
- And while we’re on the subject of booze…
- Destroying the Pantanal and Cerrado in a sustainable manner.
- Hey, it’s Hemp History Week! And you know how to celebrate that, don’t you.
Brainfood: Diet, Olives, Beef, Shade trees, Tree regeneration, Poverty, Weeds, Birds
- 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.
African seed laboratory network established?
FAO announces the establishment of a “pan-African network of seed testing laboratories” by the African Union and the African Seed Network. But there is lots in the press release I simply do not understand.
For one, the report focuses on the Forum for African Seed Testing (FAST), which will be “initially based in Nairobi”. Great, but that’s not quite a “network of seed testing laboratories”. At least, not yet.
The idea is “to speed up the harmonization of a continent-wide seed market in traditional and non-traditional crops”. Is a continent-wide market really the way to go to promote the diversity of non-traditional crops?
“The problem of poor seed quality has plagued African agriculture for years and has, in part, contributed to the failure of the green revolution in Africa,” said Robert G. Guei, Senior Officer with FAO’s Agriculture and Consumer Protection Department.
In part? How big a part, do you reckon?
Sorry for all the questions — I have others too — but I’m obviously having a little difficulty understanding the point of both FAST and the release announcing it.
Nibbles: GM in Africa, Bananas and Dates, Nutrition
- “The GM debate is about more than biosafety.” SciDev.net’s editor tells it like it is.
- Jeremy gets into a historical tiz about turning dates into bananas.
- One take on a report for USAID suggesting food aid could be more nutritious.
Food Slideshows
Two food slideshows for your delectation today.
One celebrates the orange-fleshed sweet potato and other nu-nutritional delights. Or, as Wired magazine puts it: “a visit to the laboratory of the International Potato Center in Maputo, Mozambique, where biofortification researchers are saving lives with starch”. Gabba gabba hey!
The other is from Foreign Policy magazine, which says: “The food in our mouths defines us in far more fundamental and visceral terms than the gas in our tanks or the lines on a map. So it’s not surprising that the most important questions of global politics often boil down to: What should we eat?”
Alas, time is pressing and so a detailed appreciation is currently out of the question, but both sites accept comments, and we’d be delighted if you would care to share any comments you do have here.