- IITA set to expand its ability to provide the world with yam diversity.
- “Agricultural biodiversity is essential for farmers as it places them in a better position to manage climate change.” Wait, what?
- An exotic melon is found in Birmingham, UK. But can you make juice from its seeds?
- James dissects the latest genome announcement: cacao. Ignore the press release, just read this.
- Biotropica has a special issue on biodiversity. Even some agrobiodiversity.
- The history of food consumption in the 20th century. Scary reading.
- New Internationalist magazine has a special issue on seed saving! But only a couple of articles available online, alas.
- Wonderful photos of the rice harvest from Flickr.
- Mongolian cashmere can only get more expensive.
- Australians have more to cope with than a back-stabbing prime minister, it seems. Their eucalypts are in trouble. Something to do with fire, maybe.
Nobel Conference: Making Food Good
Speaking of Nobel and all that, the 46th Annual Nobel Conference on 5-6 October “will examine the question ‘what makes food good?’ from a variety of vantage points, including those of nutrition, taste, health, agricultural biodiversity, and food security”. Some good people on the bill. By the way, for anyone who is the tiniest bit confused, this isn’t at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden but at St Peter in Minnesota, USA.
Borlaug Medallion for Kofi Annan shock
The Des Moines, Iowa-based World Food Prize Foundation has awarded its Norman Borlaug Medallion to former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan, who now heads the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, a foundation-funded effort to help small farmers increase their productivity and well-being.
While not quite on a par with Henry Kissinger’s 1973 Nobel Peace Prize, that’s quite a surprising award. So what has Mr Annan done to deserve it? Headed the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, mostly.
“Over the past decade, no one has done more than Kofi Annan to bring attention to the critical issue of global food security and nutrition around the world nor in fulfilling Norman Borlaug’s dream of bringing the Green Revolution to Africa.”
The words of Kenneth Quinn, President of the World Food Prize Foundation, which awards the medal.
That would be the same Green Revolution that turned India into a grain exporters where 42% of the children are stunted as a result of malnutrition? And the same Kofi Annan who laid out the Millennium Development Goals, which were going to halve hunger and poverty by 2015, which won him and the UN a Nobel Peace Prize to sit alongside Kissinger’s, and which look like missing most targets in most countries.
You could be forgiven for thinking that given the past record on global food and nutrition security, some fresh thinking might be in order. And there was some criticism at the African Green Revolution Forum, where Quinn presented the medallion to Annan. Not of Annan, of course; that would be rude. But of the approach.
[T]he limits of Borlaug’s work did not go unnoticed at the conference. At a session on the African agenda on climate change, Kwesi Attah-Krah of Bioversity, a Rome-based group, noted that the Green Revolution in India had been criticized for excessive irrigation and loss of genetic diversity in crops.
Although other speakers noted the political will needed to achieve a truly Green Revolution in Africa, Attah-Krah says, “Political will is adequate, but it has to be faced with reality. We need political bravery. This is not one size fits all. Have we done enough thinking on sustainability?”
Oh, and, by the way, the FAO’s estimate of the number of hungry dropped last year by 700,000, give or take.
Nibbles: Maize RNA, Hybrids, Cacao, Banana stats, Biofuels, Barley water, Ecosystem services, Coca, Chinese medicinals, Hunger
- Maize boffins move on to RNA. Hard row to hoe.
- The coolness of hybrids. No, not the cars. Includes crop wild relatives.
- Bioversity makes the case that cacao is charismatic. Hard row to hoe.
- IITA tries to crowdsource banana production data. Hard row to hoe. BTW, why not include variety information? Well, maybe they will.
- Jatropha rebooted?
- The history of barley water. Surprisingly weird.
- Cory Bradshaw’s presentation on the global erosion of ecosystem services. A quick look reveals little on that often overlooked service: the provision of diversity for agriculture.
- The importance of coca in Andean culture.
- Chinese medicinal herbs doing just fine in North Carolina.
- FAO hunger report parsed by The Guardian.
The CGIAR and agrobiodiversity
The latest issue of the CGIAR’s e-newsletter does a number on agrobiodiversity, in an effort to position the system for Nagoya. ((Well, they’re not alone.)) But what about that megaprogramme, then?