- Pope Mary and The Church of Almighty Good Food. Sounds like a fun read.
- IIED massages Treaty in Bali: protect farmers’ rights.
- “[T]he peak of the current cycle of headline food inflation is already behind us,” Indian economist tells Wall Street Journal.
Balinese news massage
I’m sure our readers do not have to be reminded that they can follow the deliberations of the Fourth Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture online. Almost as good as being there in a fancy hotel in Bali. As ever, we will publish all gossip, the more scandalous the better.
The CGIAR’s impact spelled out
The collaborative work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has resulted in development impacts on a scale that is without parallel in the international community.
And there are 40 of them, more than half in crop improvement, half a dozen in natural resources management, a few in the policy arena. Anyone out there disagree? Anything left out? Anyone think some of “impacts” included are not so great after all? Let us know.
Let me start the ball rolling. I happen to think that putting together and maintaining the international germplasm collections, and placing them under the aegis of the International Treaty, is a significant technical and policy achievement in its own right. After all, they underpinned all that crop improvement. Maybe that doesn’t count as an “impact.” But perhaps it should.
Nibbles: Mapping species, Paddies, Duplicates in genebanks, Chinese mystery millet, Cherimoya, ITPGRFA, AnGR lectures, Bulgur, Heirloom apples
- Biogeographic Information System Spatial Ecological Analysis of Megavertebrate Populations. Not agrobiodiversity by any stretch but stunning all the same, and a clarion call to our community to sort out Genebank Database Hell, surely.
- Traditional paddies as ecosystems. Great ones, too.
- Title says “seed banks susceptible to sham samples,” text says not really, and maybe it doesn’t matter much anyway. Our take from a few days ago.
- China’s millet useful in Africa. Which millet? Your guess is as good as mine.
- Cherimoya going seedless.
- Annex 1 list of International Treaty on PGRFA to expand? Well, maybe. Whatever, wow.
- Lecture materials on conservation and use of animal genetic resources.
- The ancient fast foods of Greece.
- Conserving heirloom apples. Nice gig if you can get it.
Nibbles: Mead, Treaty, Zoonoses, Flowery margins, Post-doc, Sacred Groves, Posters, Maize in Africa.
- Mead, part 4. You can find 1-3 yourselves.
- Plant genetic resources key to food security. The Jakarta Post gets it.
- Long, complex post from ILRI on zoonoses; diseases that infect people and animals.
- What are all the flowers for? The Provincial Agricultural Chamber of East Flanders seeks answers. h/t PAR.
- Wanna do a post-doc on Comprehensive modelling of agro-biodiversity in relation to seed exchange networks?
- Sacred groves threatened, by Times of India.
- Fabulous botanical posters, many featuring useful species, and all useful information. Of course tomatoes are fruits.
- I meant to write in detail about how Untapped crop data from Africa predicts corn peril if temperatures rise, but you know, life intervened.