Policy

May 13, 2020May 13, 2020

Diversify for better and more equitable nutrition

This year’s Global Nutrition Report came out yesterday. It calls for…

…a pro-equity agenda that mainstreams nutrition into food systems and health systems, supported by strong financing and accountability. With only five years left to meet the 2025 global nutrition targets, time is running out. We must focus action where the need is greatest for maximum impact.

That includes actions centred around increasing dietary diversity, especially for kids. Prabhu Pingali’s Spotlight 4.1 section of the report shows that more attention to non-staples crops can be a valuable approach for that.

Spotlight 4.1 shows that virtually all the increase in food energy (calories) from 1970 to 2010 is accounted for by non-staple crops, which are relatively more nutrient-dense. The proportion of calories from sugars and sweeteners has declined since 1970. This positive trend highlights the need for a more balanced policy and research and development focus on non-staple crops, to support producers to diversify. This in turn could improve the diversity of crops contributing to a balanced and healthy dietary composition.

Pity this important insight hasn’t found its way in much of the media coverage.

May 11, 2020April 29, 2020

Brainfood: Community seedbanks, Habitat conservation, Maize breeding, NWFP, Neolithic dairy, Straw, Double burden, Species protection, Salty rice, Barley landraces, Scicomm

Do community seed banks contribute to the social-ecological resilience of communities? A case-study from Western Guatemala. Yes, but they have to move with the times.
Reconciling global priorities for conserving biodiversity habitat. Only about 20% of high value habitat is protected.
Genome-wide selection and genetic improvement during modern maize breeding. Breeding in the US and China converged.
Non-wood forest products in Europe – A quantitative overview. Value of berries, mushrooms etc. amounts to almost three quarters of the value of the wood harvest, ten times the usually estimate.
Latitudinal gradient in dairy production with the introduction of farming in Atlantic Europe. Was there a taboo against fish?
Recent Advances in Dual Purpose Rice and Wheat Research: a synthesis. It was worth focusing on straw in breeding, and still is.
Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017. Hotspots in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Surely dietary diversity could help in those places?
Is there a peaceful cohabitation between human and natural habitats? Assessing global patterns of species loss. Yes, there is, in very poor and very rich places. Would be interesting to mash up with the above.
Back to the Wild: On a Quest for Donors Toward Salinity Tolerant Rice. Need to move beyond rufipogon.
Insights into phylogeny, age and evolution of Allium (Amaryllidaceae) based on the whole plastome sequences. Monophyletic, amazingly, with 3 evolutionary lineages.
Barley Landraces: Ecological heritage for edaphic stress adaptations and sustainable production. Use landraces as recipients, rather than donors. Before it’s too late.
Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. More in the breach, I suspect…

May 7, 2020

Nibbles: Alert edition

Book alert: Biodiversity, Food and Nutrition — A New Agenda for Sustainable Food Systems.
Thread alert: Monumental analysis of crop yield trends in the USA.
Woke alert: WorldVeg ticks a lot of boxes with its work on a peppers core collection.
Policy alert: Why haven’t farmers’ varieties found a place in national and global seed markets?

May 6, 2020

Our climate envelope takes a licking

The headlines for coverage of the paper “Future of the human climate niche” will no doubt be about the fact that over the coming 50 years, absent migration or mitigation, 1 to 3 billion people look like they’ll end up living outside the climatic conditions our species has gotten used to over the past 6000 years. But I can’t help thinking about something else. What are those bits of the human climate envelope where there is currently so little agriculture and livestock? I’ve drawn little white ovals around them in this figure from the paper.

May 4, 2020May 4, 2020

Food Planet Prize highlights agrobiodiversity

I didn’t know about the Food Planet Prize, but the editors’ picks this year in the area of biodiversity look pretty cool.

The selection comes with a Special Report by Dan Saladino on “Biodiversity in farming and nature.” You can submit nominations until 31 May.