- Learn about iron beans from a HarvestPlus video, maybe.
- Learn about the tomato in Ghana, more than you might need to know if you read all the reports.
- Learn how Andy Jarvis spoke truth to ex-power, about fruit data gathering project prospects.
- Learn how the Africa College, based at Leeds University in the UK, is working on a range of agricultural problems.
Nibbles: Huitlacoche, Failure, Food sovereignty, Cold storage, Hunger, Prices
- Mat Kinase discover best smut ever.
- World Bank embraces failure. Now there’s an idea. More here.
- I really don’t have time today for Food sovereignty in Africa: The people’s alternative. Anyone care to interpret?
- Kremlin now tweeting in English. No word yet on Pavlovsk.
- Kenya invests in new market facilities … to improve exports of food.
- Rachel Laudan considers hunger — and celebrates David Livingstone.
- Speaking of which, wanna understand food price spikes? Me too.
Nibbles: Trojan Horse? Farmer preferences, Yucca moths, Bees, GM bananas, Coffee
- This is not a Trojan Horse. Madcap agrobiodiversity antics in Abruzzo, Italy. No, I don’t get it either.
- Farmers are willing to forego some extra income or yield to obtain a more stable and environmentally adaptable crop variety. They are? Someone tell the Nabobs.
- Yucca moths and yuccas; an astonishing evolutionary story.
- Bee research gets USD1.5 million for a big database. Hope it helps.
- “GM bananas could cut blindness, anaemia in East Africa.” Because nothing else will?
- Coffee, a history.
Nibbles: CGIAR “change”, Cuba, Data, Pavlovsk, Homegardens, Soil bacteria, Thai rice
- GFAR publishes list of Megaprogramme (or whatever they are called) consultations.
- Cuba’s Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate Rolando Macias Cardenas reports on tomato paste. In other news, Cuba has a Miscellaneous Crops Under-delegate. No, wait, that’s not really news.
- While Sachs et al. moan about better agricultural data, CIAT go out and get it.
- The Pavlovsk TweetMedvedev campaign rolls on.
- “…maximum diversity can be conserved at an intermediate level of income” in Javanese bamboo-tree homegardens.
- Right, so trees “farm” bacteria. What some people will write in a press release.
- Thailand’s rice farmers trying to cope with climate change. Like they have a choice.
Nixing agrobiodiversity?
Richard Jonasse at Food First did a reasonable job a few days ago of rehearsing the old WEMA vs LEISA (let’s call it) dichotomy in agricultural development. He’s done it before, and so have we, 1 and I won’t go on any more about that. But I did want to say something about one of his assertions. In talking about the policies of USAID and the Gates Foundation, Jonasse says:
What these policies do not do is directly end African hunger by strengthening Africa’s farmers where they stand. This point was underscored recently when, after the Gates Foundation donated $270m (with a promise of $1Bn over the next few years) to CGIAR, Gates’ representatives nixed CGIAR’s agricultural biodiversity mega-programme, saying it was “unfocussed.” This logic represents precisely what is wrong with the Gates/USAID approach. Only an “unfocussed” low-tech approach that honors biological and cultural diversity is likely to be successful in Africa.
Well, that may well be, but the SciDevNet piece to which he links to support that “unfocussed” comment by a “Gates’ representative” doesn’t do that at all. What “Prabhu Pingali, deputy director of agricultural policy and statistics at the Gates Foundation, told the Global Conference for Agricultural Research Development (GCARD) (28—31 March)” is that the megapgrogrammes, as then constituted, “[b]ecause they are so fuzzy … are not likely to generate enthusiasm for increased funding.” All the megaprogrammes, note, not just the agricultural biodiversity one. The agrobiodiversity megaprogramme was indeed “nixed,” but I can find no comment by a Gates Foundation rep on it, either for or against. And anyway, everything still seems to be up in the air on these megaprogrammes. You can follow the CGIAR’s change process on their website and blog.