Nibbles: Sorghum and rice and climate change, Pacific agrobiodiversity today and yesterday, Japanese microbiota, Wolf domestication, Organic and fungi, Crop wild relatives, Bees, Hunger, Silk

A market in agrobiodiversity conservation credits?

So apparently Caroline Spelman, the new UK Secretary of State for environment, food and rural affairs, will be considering “a new system of conservation credits to protect habitats,” in line with a manifesto promise.

Under the scheme proposed in the manifesto, any property development that results in biodiversity loss must compensate for that loss by an equal investment in biodiversity and habitat conservation or restoration elsewhere.

Or so says a generally favourable commentary in The Guardian by Ben Caldecott, head of UK & EU climate change and energy policy at Climate Change Capital (CCC), who actually thinks the whole thing should go global. Worth a try, why not? But will the scheme include agrobiodiversity? If the said property development, or whatever, resulted in loss of genetic diversity in crop landraces or local livestock breeds, would it likewise be brought to book? It would be nice, though perhaps naive, to think that it would.

Nibbles: African success, Tef biotech, Hybrid rice, Livestock data, Wine grapes, Uphoff on SRI, Blog Carnival

Nibbles: Bees, IFPRI, Undernutrition policy, Haiti earthquake, Yeast

  • Latest news on the bee front ain’t good. Except on Isle of Man.
  • IFPRI accused of being industry shills. But where’s the evidence?
  • Commentary on Hilary Clinton’s undernutrition speech.
  • Monsanto did not donate GMO seed to Haiti. But it was hybrids, so basically a one-off. Better than nothing? Adding insult to injury? I dunno, you decide.
  • So apparently we have the unstable margins of chromosomes to thank for beer. I’ll drink to that.