- World Genepool at the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry and Its Utilization in Agriculture. Anyone got a copy?
- Gloucester Old Spot pigs get protection. Not that they really need it.
- BASF takes hi-tech breeding to the next level: 40,000 individual rice plants on a robotic ride to the future.
- Rebsie does carrots.
- The perfect storm is one element of the triple crisis.
- Nitrogen-fixing shade trees really do feed young cacao trees.
- “Sheep is your backbone.”
- Bringing gluten-free sorghum beer to the huddled masses … of Colorado.
- Eat like a pope. (Not much diversity.)
- Cadbury heiress fancies starting a new chocolate company? Maybe she’ll go all varietal.
- Scientia pro Publica. Carnival time again.
Overstating the case against the Pacific development paradigm
I must confess to having some sympathy with Helen Hughes’ scathing critique of development in the South Pacific, but she goes too far, surely. For example, with reference to one of the Millennium Goals, she says that
“The ending of hunger” amounts to a stock diet of sago and stringy sweet potato. Population pressure, plus the erosion of hunting, has led to a decline in nutrition.
However, even in such undeniably poor and troubled places as the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal people eat several root and tuber crops, bananas and a range of indigenous vegetables. There certainly are nutritional problems in the Pacific. Rising rates of diabetes and heart disease are testament to that. But the modernization and homogenization of diets are to blame, not “sago and stringy sweet potato.” If anything, it will be work on those very same sweet potatoes so disparaged by Hughes that will end hunger in many parts of the Pacific.
And to suggest that oil palm cultivation is some sort of panacea is disingenuous at best. Finally, I’m no expert on the cultures of Papua New Guinea, but this parting shot
…why is it that after a decade of implementation of the Millennium Goals, backed by billions of taxpayers’ dollars, women in PNG villages choose to breastfeed piglets because pigs are more valuable than children?
sounds like a straw man to me.
Nibbles: Maize, Millets, Pollinators, Ungulates, Drugs, Orchids
- Long article on the politics (and more) of maize in Mexico.
- Yet more on the slow comeback of millets in (parts of) India.
- International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy on July 24-28, 2010 at Penn State.
- Hunted ungulates are semi-domesticated.
- “…psychoactive plant toxins were a mundane occurrence in the environments of hominid evolution, and our ancestors may have been exploiting plant drugs for very long periods of time.”
- “I was confronted with centrefolds showing downy, smooth petals and moistened, hot-pink lips that pouted in the direction of tautly curved shafts and heavily veined pouches.”
Swap crops and feed 9 billion people
From Jacob van Etten.
Some demographic projections tell us that global population numbers will grow to 9 billion in 2100 and stabilize around this number. So how can people three generations down the line feed themselves, while still conserving biodiversity?
Lian Pin Koh offers a solution based on simple economic principles. Grow the most productive crop to produce cereal, oil or protein, and grow each crop where it grows best. He presents an interactive world map to demonstrate that no extra land needs to be taken into production to feed 9 billion people.
The results are interesting. Strikingly, Brazil is doing just fine. Just a bit more of rice and Brazilian agriculture is optimal. Other countries need to change drastically. North European countries need to switch from barley to wheat. Canada and Russia need to abolish wheat agriculture and adopt maize. West Africa and the Cono Sur needs to grow more rice but northern South America and the US need to grow more maize. Yields will go up automagically, as each crop is planted on land that is more suited to it, fulfilling the dream of the 1980s land use evaluators.
The study is still in preparation and no background info on the methodology is available yet. Transport costs and climate change do not seem to be taken into account. “Optimal” seems to refer to yields per hectare, not to labour and inputs. Overall, the trend seems to be towards more high-yielding crops, which also require more inputs. With more people, more labour is available. But other inputs, like water, are limited.
Another question would be why crop use is sub-optimal now. Is it trade barriers? Cultural preferences and agricultural traditions? Or is it economics, really?
There is of course more to conservation than making agriculture more efficient. Another study shows that intensifying land use does not in fact put a break on crop land expansion. Additional measures would be needed to ensure that more efficiency indeed stops crops taking over non-agricultural land, and impacting biodiversity.
Even so, this is an interesting thought experiment. In an ideal world, swapping crops is enough to raise crop production some 30%. Feeding 9 billion people suddenly appears a bit easier.
Nibbles: Allium, Desertification and livestock, Striga, Emmer, Hawaii, Almond, Seeds at FAO, Cassava in central Africa, Seed sculpture, Biofortification, Millets, Lunatrick pea
- Botany Photo of the Day is an onion wild relative! Pretty.
- More on that livestock-can-help-reduce-desertification thing, this time from Scientific American.
- Breeding Striga-resistant sorghum. Whatever it takes to protect local beer, boffin-dudes!
- Emmer wheat reviewed to bits.
- No passport data for your barley? Fear not.
- Rachel Laudan ably defends Hawaiian food.
- Origins of almond traced to Iran. Not for the first time.
- Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture: A Commons Perspective. Presentation from our friends at FAO.
- Presentation on the untapped potential of cassava in the Great Lakes region of Africa. One of many from CIAT lately. Check out their stuff on beans too.
- The Seed Cathedral of Shanghai. Thanks to those public awareness wizards at Kew.
- Big shindig on biofortification. Be there, or be malnourished.
- Times of India bangs the drum for nutritious millets.
- Yet more loveliness from serious amateur pea breeder Rebsie Fairholm.