That’s the title of an IFPRI project funded by the Gates Foundation which aims to document success stories in agricultural development. We mentioned it here before, when it was just being launched. There are a couple of agrobiodiversity examples among the case studies, including maize in Africa, mungbean in Asia and diet diversification in Bangladesh.
Nibbles: Goldman Environmental Prize, UK networking, European landraces publication, Seed Warriors, India agrobiodiversity sites, Beer books, Teosinte, Drought foods, Sugarcane genebank, Regional genebank in South Asia, Rhubarb, Annals, Food articles, Cryo
- Goldman Prizewinner Jesús León Santos: “It is time we recognize that traditional agricultural methods can make strong contributions to biodiversity conservation. We should encourage it and value it as a way to produce healthy foods that conserve and care for the environment.” Time indeed.
- British twofer: The Food Climate Research Network aims “to better understand how the food system contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and to research and promote ways of reducing them.” Then there’s the Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures. Will they talk to each other, I wonder.
- From Bioversity, “European landraces: on-farm conservation, management and use.” I wonder if the Foresight Project will download a copy.
- The “Seed Warriors” trailer. Oscar buzz, I hear.
- Agricultural biodiversity heritage sites in India. Ethnobotanist brings together information on food plants used during drought. Mashup, anyone?
- A book about beer. My two favourite things. Oooh, here’s another couple! And it’s not over: Spiegel weighs in on the old chestnut about beer being the reason for agriculture. My tankard runneth over.
- CIMMYT team monitors teosinte. Teosinte planning to fight back.
- Regional sugarcane genebank is actually being used! Heartwarming. Oh, and, coincidentally, here’s a history of Indian sugarcane breeding.
- “A SAARC Plant Genetic Resource Bank for rice, wheat and maize may be created to facilitate free exchange of germplasm between the member countries. To begin with, the Indian Gene Bank facilities may be utilized, with suitable modalities.” Not so heartwarming.
- The Russian roots of Alaskan rhubarb. Take that, Palin! Note the bit about St Isaac’s Cathedral, which of course sits opposite VIR. How apposite is that?
- Nigel Chaffey rounds up the usual suspects in presenting a potpourri of “plant-based items from the world’s media” for Annals of Botany. May well be one to watch. And not just because genebanks make an appearance.
- Amazing food roundup.
- Cryopreserving Chip, the Tennessee fainting goat.
Cutting down (some of) Kenya’s eucalypts
You may remember I threw a bit of a hissy fit some time back when my mother-in-law was forced to cut down some of her eucalypt plantation as part of a Kenyan government effort to combat the drought that was plaguing the country (it has since broken in a big way, causing much flooding in places). Well, I was there at Christmas and saw the result for myself, and what really got me was not so much what she was forced to do, but the fact that the order is not being not uniformly applied. Have a look.
Now, a year ago I would not have been able to take that picture because of the thick stand of blue gums I would have been standing in. Gone now, of course, though some are beginning to re-sprout. But the question is: why weren’t the big-shot owners of the huge tea farm on the other side of the valley forced to cut down their eucalypts? They’re even closer to the stream than ours were.
Anyway, some good did come out of all this. More on that later.
A lot of plants, not much meat and maximum variety
The Oxford Real Farming Conference – January 5th 2010
A guest post from our friend Richard Sanders.
Every year in early January “the establishment” of British agriculture gathers in Oxford for the Oxford Farming Conference; two days of debate on their selection of the farming issues of the day. This year the massed ranks of land agents, company agronomists, financial advisers, supermarket buyers, grain traders (and some farmers) busied themselves with debate on the retirement age of farmers and market prices in a global economy.
Frustrated at the lack of engagement with the true failings of modern agriculture, a fringe event launched this year — The Oxford Real Farming Conference. Its organisers, including biologist and writer Colin Tudge and journalist Graham Harvey, are convinced that the Earth’s natural resources are easily able to provide a good, healthy diet for everyone living on the planet today — and everyone likely to be living on it 50 years from now and beyond. All it will take, they say, is an agriculture based on principles of sound biology rather than economic dogma.
“Current farming methods are clearly failing. They are over-dependent on fossil fuels; they damage soils and deplete scarce water resources; they degrade everyday foods; they reduce biodiversity and squander precious wildlife; they pollute our global environment. They are part of a global food system that is at the mercy of speculators and is every bit as precarious as the world banking system,” says Colin Tudge.
“Quite simply, high-input, industrial agriculture is incapable of reform. Rather than feed people, its aim is to serve the interests of global chemical, trading and investment corporations. Far from creating a secure supply of high-quality food, today’s agribusiness can be counted on to obstruct progress.”
As an alternative, the conference heard Professor Martin Wolfe of the Organic Research Centre extol the sustainable virtues of agro-forestry and composite cross populations of cereals over what has become “traditional” mono-cropping.
The call went out for the abandonment of energy-dependent nitrogen fertilisers; the replacement of rampant resource depletion with farming methods that work with rather than against eco-systems; and an end to the steady rationalisation and concentration of power in food processing and distribution.
“Feeding people is easy,” says Colin Tudge. “We must move to a recipe of a lot of plants, not much meat, maximum variety.”
By accident (or design?) the conference was held in the very same room (The Old Library of the University Church) that witnessed the inaugural meeting of the British aid agency Oxfam in 1942. That move was triggered by the need to supply food to starving women and children in German-occupied Greece. Auspicious or what?
Nibbles: Indian buffalo, Indian local crops, CBD, AgricultureBridge, Kew, Geo-referencing, Cyprus, China and climate change, CC icons, Chinese AnGR, FAO information, Rose symbolism, Pacific ethnobotany, Grape history and genetics, Taraxacum
Hold on to your hats, this will make up for lost time. Hope you all had a nice break, Happy New Year!
- Video on the “Night Queen of Chilika.” Not what you think: it’s a buffalo breed.
- Indian jury calls for more work on local crops. Wait, a jury?
- Indian NGO says “[n]ational sovereignty over genetic resources could undermine food security.” Wow.
- AgricultureBridge “connect[s] practitioners to each other and to leading universities to help resolve some of the world’s most pressing questions in agriculture and conservation.” We’ll see.
- Big year for Kew: many new species described, including CWRs; many blogs launched; much geo-referencing done.
- Not agrobiodiversity, but speaking of geo-referencing and the like…
- Cypriot no man’s land good for biodiversity. Including crop wild relatives? I think we should be told.
- Chinese farmers struggle to adapt to climate change. Plenty more of this kind of thing out there, no doubt. Like this, for instance?
- And yet list of “climate change icons” only includes one plant. Something should be done.
- Chinese researchers talk about animal genetic resources conservation. If you’re frustrated at missing that, get ready for Europeans talking about the Mediterranean pig. But meanwhile, get to grips with the FAO Animal Genetic Resources Information Bulletin.
- Speaking of FAO info bulletins, feast on the ones on non-wood forest products and plant breeding.
- A rose is a rose is a rose. But for the Romans?
- Carcinogenic bark of endemic Pohnpei cinnamon not bad for you after all. If you boil it.
- “It is ironic that the despised grape Gouais blanc was not just a parent for several of the world’s best-known and most important varieties, such as Chardonnay and Gamay noir, it was the maternal parent, providing additional DNA and potentially determining important characteristics of the offspring.” Oh, so, so ironic.
- Natural rubber from weird dandelion? No, really, all kinds of boffins are working on it.