- Diversifying agrifood systems to ensure global food security following the Russia–Ukraine crisis. Diversify markets, production, crops and technology to de-risk agrifood systems.
- Genebanks at Risk: Hazard Assessment and Risk Management of National and International Genebanks. De-risk genebanks first though.
- Climate-Smart Agriculture in African Countries: A Review of Strategies and Impacts on Smallholder Farmers. Could have made more of the need for diversity, but improved varieties at least are in there.
- Adoption and impact of improved amaranth cultivars in Tanzania using DNA fingerprinting. Yeah, even improved varieties of traditional local veggies, why not.
- GlobalUsefulNativeTrees, a database documenting 14,014 tree species, supports synergies between biodiversity recovery and local livelihoods in landscape restoration. But don’t forget trees.
- Efforts of researchers and other stakeholders to manage an unfolding epidemic: Lessons from potato purple top in Ecuador. Resilience is hard.
- Seed Systems Resilience—An Overview. Continuous flow of diversity, trustworthy institutions and innovation are needed to de-risk seed systems. Would certainly have helped with the above.
- Navigating toward resilient and inclusive seed systems. Or…: do no harm, think diversity and adopt a seed security perspective. Good to see diversity as the common thread in this discourse.
- Seed systems development to navigate multiple expectations in Ethiopia, Malawi and Tanzania. The above put into practice.
- Community seed banks: Instruments for food security or unsustainable endeavour? A case study of Mkombezi Community Seed Bank in Malawi. Yes, indeed, community seedbanks can contribute to seed systems resilience and food security.
- Maize varietal replacement in Eastern and Southern Africa: Bottlenecks, drivers and strategies for improvement. Seed companies need to be more proactive…
- Why farmers use so many different maize varieties in West Kenya? …but remember about doing no harm. And we’re back to diversity I see.
Nibbles: Crop failure, Transformation, Malta genebank, Virginia fruits, Nigeria genebank, Bean breeding, Peasants’ rights
- Multiple simultaneous crop failures are going to get more common.
- All the more reason to transform food system, right?
- Which means funding genebanks properly, even on Malta.
- And saving what can still be saved. Like fruit trees in the US, yes, why not?
- But you have to know what to do with all that stuff in genebanks. Nigeria is showing a way to do that.
- One thing you can do is breed beans which take less time to cook. Win-win.
- While doing all that, let’s not forget peasants’ rights.
Nibbles: Milpa revival, Cretan olive, Lost apples, Moche meals, African agroecology, Global Tree Knowledge Platform, Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity
- Marketing the milpa.
- Marketing a traditional Cretan olive variety.
- Finding lost apples in New England. Now to market them.
- Taking new passion fruit varieties to market in Australia.
- Deconstructing Moche history, society and culture through compost and struggle meals. No sign of markets.
- Reviewing the state of agroecology in Africa. Does “economic diversification” count as marketing?
- The Global Tree Knowledge Platform must have stuff on marketing somewhere.
- The books series ISSUES IN AGRICULTURAL BIODIVERSITY, now free to download, has lots on marketing.
Brainfood: Croplands, Satellite phenotyping, Farm size, Bt double, Scaling up, Opinion leaders, Gendered knowledge, OFSP, Ethiopia sorghum diversity, Banana bunchy top, Climate change & pathogens, Bean pathogens, Mixtures, Rewards
- CROPGRIDS: A global geo-referenced dataset of 173 crops circa 2020. It’s great to finally know where crops are grown. Thanks, satellites!
- Satellite imagery for high-throughput phenotyping in breeding plots. Ok, so now we could theoretically also say where landraces are grown around the world? Thanks, satellites!
- Likely decline in the number of farms globally by the middle of the century. Wait, you have to model this, you can’t figure it out from space? Thanks, satellites.
- Just agricultural science: The green revolution, biotechnologies, and marginalized farmers in Africa. Looks like you can’t predict the success of pest resistant Bt cowpea in Burkina Faso from space.
- Dried up Bt cotton narratives: climate, debt and distressed livelihoods in semi-arid smallholder India. Likewise Bt cotton in India. In both cases, fancy technology is not enough.
- Scaling Up Pro-Poor Agrobiodiversity Interventions as a Development Option. Turns out it’s not just a matter of transferring technology, satellite or otherwise. If only they had had this analytical framework when they thought of Bt crops.
- Male and stale? Questioning the role of “opinion leaders” in agricultural programs. Yes indeed, upscaling needs changes in behaviours and attitudes, and for that you need those social networks, but “key farmers” are overrated as drivers of change.
- Gendered Knowledge, Conservation Priorities and Actions: A Case Study of On-Farm Conservation of Small Millets Among Malayalar of Kolli Hills, South India. And here’s another example, if more were needed.
- Assessment of seed system interventions for biofortified orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP) in Malawi. Not clear if this is another example, but I suspect it is. Can you tell OFSP from space?
- Inventory of on-farm sorghum landrace diversity and climate adaptation in Tigray, Northern Ethiopia: implications for sorghum breeding and conservation. No opinion leaders nor satellites were used in this work.
- Banana bunchy top disease in Africa: Predicting continent-wide disease risks by combining survey data and expert knowledge. Both opinion leaders and satellites were used in this work. Well, not really but I couldn’t resist it.
- Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security and paths forward. Doesn’t cover banana bunchy top but I’m sure the main conclusion that better modelling and monitoring are needed applies. Using satellites, no doubt.
- Understanding farmer knowledge and site factors in relation to soil-borne pests and pathogens to support agroecological intensification of smallholder bean production systems. Sure, better modelling and monitoring are great, but in the end you have to bring it down to earth.
- Crop Diversity Experiment: towards a mechanistic understanding of the benefits of species diversity in annual crop systems. Diversification of arable crop systems through mixtures need not be bad for yields. I wonder if you can see crop mixtures from space.
- Bending the curve of biodiversity loss requires rewarding farmers economically for conservation management. This does not cover crop biodiversity, but I guess the above does, to a degree. If there were money on the table, you probably wouldn’t need social networks, let alone opinion leaders.
Nibbles: SDG funding, GBIF RoI, Food system revitalisation, Bean Power, British baked beans, Cock beer, Access Agriculture, SCANR, Nuts, Hawaii, USDA livestock, Norway livestock, SPC, and WorldVeg genebanks, Millet ambassador, Mango orchards, Wild foods, Degraded lands, Orphan crops, PPB, Biofortification, Ugali, Variety ID, Variety definitions
- The SDGs need proper long-term financing, say Prof. Jeffrey Sachs and co-authors. Maybe he’d like to have a look at the the Crop Trust’s endowment fund for SDG 2.5?
- There’s a 15x return on investment from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)? Ok, do Genesys next.
- Want to revitalize the food system? Think lentils, bananas, kale and walnuts. My take? Why stop there?
- I mean, there’s all sorts of cool pulses besides lentils, nice as they are.
- Really no end to them.
- Want some cock beer with your Lincolnshire beans? I bet you do.
- Shout out for the Access Agriculture farmer-to-farmer educational video platform from the Seed System Newsletter. Nothing on walnuts, alas. Or cock beer.
- As we’re on online resources, there’s also the Support Centre for Agriculture and Nutrition Research (SCANR). It “connects researchers with resources and guidance for carrying out interdisciplinary research related to agriculture, food systems, nutrition, and health.” I wonder what it has to say about walnuts.
- Nut genebank gets an upgrade in Oregon. No, not walnuts, alas. It’s Miller time!
- Lots of genebank action in Hawaii too.
- Livestock also getting the genebank treatment in the US.
- But not just in the US: Norway too. Love these back-from-the-brink stories.
- The regional genebank for the Pacific is one of my favourites.
- It’s up there with that of the World Vegetable Centre, which is getting a write-up in the New Yorker, of all places.
- Of course you can have community-level genebanks too. Here are two examples from India: conserving millets and mangoes.
- Maybe there should be more genebanks for wild food species, but these cool in situ conservation stories will do for now.
- Investing in community farming projects can revitalise degraded lands.
- Those farming project don’t have to involve orphan crops, but it wouldn’t hurt.
- You could do participatory plant breeding on them, couldn’t you. This book says that be just the ticket for rural revitalisation. Lots of revitalisation in these Nibbles.
- They would help with malnutrition where maize biofortification hasn’t worked so well, for example.
- Maize? Maize needs to be decolonized, not biofortified.
- Extension workers need to be better at identifying different crop varieties. IITA is on the case, but doesn’t seem to have thought about putting the data on GBIF. Walnuts next?
- Wait, what’s a variety?