Policy

October 29, 2010

MEPs to save bees

Bee pollination accounts for 76 per cent of food production and 84 per cent of plant species.

OK, I know it is Friday and I am tired, but what on earth does that sentence mean? Quite apart from the spurious accuracy of 76 ((At least is wasn’t 75%, Ed.)) and 84. I’m glad to know that MEPs back plans to combat decreasing bee numbers, as reported by The Parliament, and that “the European parliament’s agriculture and rural development committee voted through a resolution on the issue on Thursday”. Alas, the report tells me nothing about the resolution and how it will actually help bees and beekeepers, nor where I can find out more.

October 28, 2010October 28, 2010

Nibbles: Ethics, Seeds, Coconut, Nordic genebank

Ethical Considerations in Agro-biodiversity Research, Collecting, and Use. In case you were thinking of doing some.
Seed control ceded?
“Scores of women from the rural households brought in finest homemade recipes on coconut.” My kind of conference.
“Unique plant bank threatened,” says Google Translate of Nordic genebanks. Thanks Britta.

October 26, 2010October 26, 2010

Nibbles: Apple Diversity, Sorghum, Ugandan organics, Cows, CABI, Giant pumpkin, Nutrigenomics, SOTW2

Apple diversity on display at Terra Madre.
A drought-resistant sorghum for Karamoja. Read the script of a radio programme.
CIAT advises Ugandan farmers: produce what you can sell, don’t sell what you can produce. Hmmmn.
Local cow breeds and Protected Designation of Origin cheeses. There’s a conclusion here struggling to emerge, but I can’t recognize it. Help me.
CABI pushes for crop diversification. Get in line!
Where giant pumpkins come from.
Nutritionists should get to grips with human diversity.
2nd State of the World’s PGRFA launched by FAO to much fanfare. And usual incorrect figures on genetic erosion. Oh I give up.

October 22, 2010October 22, 2010

Nibbles: Studentship, Cowpeas, Chocolate, Quinoa, Rice in Madagascar, Jackfruit, Wheat breeding, Indian diversity

PhD student from East Africa wanted to study greenhouse gases, biochar and other cool stuff.
Weevils eat half the cowpea harvest. Solution in the bag.
Ecuadorian chocolate experts visit the World Bank. Did they bring samples?
Lots of ecdysteroids in quinoa. Not clear to me if this is good or bad.
Yes, Malagasy rice is different.
Evaluating a Dang Rasimi jackfruit. Looks pretty good to me.
Crop wild relatives in genebanks help with drought tolerance in wheat.
Meta-paper on livelihoods diversity in rice-wheat-livestock systems Indo-Gangetic Plains has no room for varietal diversity in rice-wheat.

October 21, 2010October 21, 2010

Evaluating the Millennium Villages

We’ve shown our skepticism about the Millennium Villages here before, in particular their apparent disregard for the importance of agrobiodiversity. If I am honest, I would say that that on balance they are probably a good thing. They are certainly well-intentioned. And little else seems to have worked. But no matter how many evaluation reports I read, I suspect it is this snippet that will stay with me, quoted in a New Republic review of Peter Gill’s recent book Famine and Foreigners: Ethiopia Since Live Aid. Gill visits a…

…village called Koraro, chosen to be one of Sachs’s so-called Millennium Villages, which were meant as demonstration projects to prove that foreign aid can really work. He asks a local man whether he has ever met Sachs, to which the man replies, “I have met the owner twice”…