Not just hungry, sick

While not strictly about agricultural biodiversity (although much more could be made of agrobiodiversity in this realm) Scidev.net draws attention to an editorial in The Lancet. ((Which requires free registration to read in its entirety.)) In the run up to (yet another) High Level Summit — this time on Food Security — next week, Scidev.net reports The Lancet’s view that:

Poor terminology adds to the problem — calling undernourished people ‘hungry’ is belittling. Even the term ‘undernourished’ can be confusing to policymakers, says the editorial.

Really? How easily confused those policymakers must be.

It adds that medicalising food — where undernutrition is the disease and food the treatment — could make ensuring food supplies a bigger priority for the global health sector.

Again, because the world has such a good record of delivering global health care to those who need it most?

Climate change gets a namecheck too, natch. And if I sound just a teeny bit cynical, maybe that’s a sickness too.

Oxfam goes to town on the Other Green Revolution

We’ve blogged briefly about how vast areas of the Sahel, far from degenerating, are actually experiencing something of an agricultural rebirth, thanks in some small measure to tree-planting. ((Skeptics may point to rainfall cycles; I’m not sure it matters.)) A post from Oxfam America summarizes some of those efforts, and explains that Oxfam brought some of the people responsible — elevated to eco-hero status — to Washington DC “for discussions with US legislators about local solutions to food insecurity and climate change.” We haven’t noticed any reports of those discussions, but are happy to draw attention to the high impact of local solutions to local problems, especially when they make use of agricultural biodiversity. Thanks to CAS-IP, which has an expanded gloss on Oxfam’s efforts.

Nibbles: Climate change, Papaya sex, Inheritance, AGCommons