Nibbles: Milpa revival, Cretan olive, Lost apples, Moche meals, African agroecology, Global Tree Knowledge Platform, Issues in Agricultural Biodiversity

  1. Marketing the milpa.
  2. Marketing a traditional Cretan olive variety.
  3. Finding lost apples in New England. Now to market them.
  4. Taking new passion fruit varieties to market in Australia.
  5. Deconstructing Moche history, society and culture through compost and struggle meals. No sign of markets.
  6. Reviewing the state of agroecology in Africa. Does “economic diversification” count as marketing?
  7. The Global Tree Knowledge Platform must have stuff on marketing somewhere.
  8. 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

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

  1. 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?
  2. There’s a 15x return on investment from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)? Ok, do Genesys next.
  3. Want to revitalize the food system? Think lentils, bananas, kale and walnuts. My take? Why stop there?
  4. I mean, there’s all sorts of cool pulses besides lentils, nice as they are.
  5. Really no end to them.
  6. Want some cock beer with your Lincolnshire beans? I bet you do.
  7. Shout out for the Access Agriculture farmer-to-farmer educational video platform from the Seed System Newsletter. Nothing on walnuts, alas. Or cock beer.
  8. 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.
  9. Nut genebank gets an upgrade in Oregon. No, not walnuts, alas. It’s Miller time!
  10. Lots of genebank action in Hawaii too.
  11. Livestock also getting the genebank treatment in the US.
  12. But not just in the US: Norway too. Love these back-from-the-brink stories.
  13. The regional genebank for the Pacific is one of my favourites.
  14. It’s up there with that of the World Vegetable Centre, which is getting a write-up in the New Yorker, of all places.
  15. Of course you can have community-level genebanks too. Here are two examples from India: conserving millets and mangoes.
  16. Maybe there should be more genebanks for wild food species, but these cool in situ conservation stories will do for now.
  17. Investing in community farming projects can revitalise degraded lands.
  18. Those farming project don’t have to involve orphan crops, but it wouldn’t hurt.
  19. 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.
  20. They would help with malnutrition where maize biofortification hasn’t worked so well, for example.
  21. Maize? Maize needs to be decolonized, not biofortified.
  22. 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?
  23. Wait, what’s a variety?

Nibbles: AGRA, National security, Filipino fruits, Scuba rice, Tasteless pea, Blue Jay bean, Taiwan genebanks, Agrobiodiversity walks

  1. NGOs call on USAID to stop supporting AGRA. And not for the first time either.
  2. Report calls for US to invest more in agricultural research in support of global food security. AGRA unavailable for comment.
  3. A pean to the fruit trees of the Philippines. I’ll second that.
  4. Scuba rice comes to Africa. What took it so long?
  5. Apparently there’s a “wild pea plant” in India in which the flavour gene is turned off, and that’s a good thing. Going to have to look into this.
  6. A famous Canadian bean makes a come-back. Of course there are famous Canadian beans. More famous than that tasteless pea anyway.
  7. Nice piece on Taiwan’s crop genebanks. Lots of famous varieties in there no doubt.
  8. I really like the concept of “agrobiodiversity walks.” There should be one built around that wild tasteless pea.

Brainfood – Nutrition Edition: Sweet potato double, Seaweed, Fruits & vegetables, Chickpeas, African Indigenous crops, Vegetables, Grapes, Meat