Threats

June 23, 2022June 23, 2022

The “good berry” in a good place

Did you know that the survival of Manoomin (“the good berry,” aka wild rice, aka Zizania palustris) is enshrined in the treaty between the Ojibwe people and the US federal government? And that such treaties, of which there are dozens, “are the supreme law of the land” according to the US Constitution?

Neither did I, but I do now thanks to a fascinating podcast from 99% Invisible on The Rights of Rice and the Future of Nature. I also now know that some people think those two things (leavened with some decidedly out-of-the-box reasoning) mean that Manoomin can sue the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. It’s because of an oil pipeline that the Ojibwa people believe threatens the wild rice populations that are so important to them that they put their well-being in a treaty. We blogged about the pipeline, perhaps a bit too succinctly, a few years back.

What I don’t know is what would happen if buffel grass were to follow its Minnesotan cousin’s example.

June 20, 2022

Nibbles: Livestock genebank, Purple grain, Traditional Hawaiian farming

Call to set up a sheep genebank in Australia. Kinda surprised there isn’t one already, frankly.
Bringing back purple wheat in the US. Spoiler alert: genebanks were involved.
Going back to “organized chaos” in Hawaiian farming. There’s probably room for genebanks too, though.

June 13, 2022June 13, 2022

Brainfood: Bonds, Agrobiodiversity, Subsidies, Orphan crops, Extension, Biodiversity tourism, Green farming

Impact investing in biodiversity conservation with bonds: An analysis of financial and environmental risk. Need to show ’em the money, and that ain’t easy.
The benefits and trade-offs of agricultural diversity for food security in low- and middle-income countries: A review of existing knowledge and evidence. Agrobiodiversity is positively connected with food security in two thirds of cases. Here comes the money…
Repurposing agricultural support: Creating food systems incentives to address climate change. Less money for subsidies and trade barriers, more money for R&D.
Orphan Crops: A Best Fit for Dietary Enrichment and Diversification in Highly Deteriorated Marginal Environments. More money for R&D you say? Document the evidence that orphan crops are good for you, link it to policy and communicate it to consumers.
Extension services can promote pasture restoration: Evidence from Brazil’s low carbon agriculture plan. If only there were more money for extension too, eh?
Linking livelihood and biodiversity conservation in protected areas: Community based tourism development perspective from developing country. People around protected areas don’t see much money from tourists, but that’s better than nothing.
From boutique to mainstream: Upscaling wildlife-friendly farming through consumer premiums. Consumers are willing to fork over extra money for greener food.

June 7, 2022

Nibbles: Gulf garden, Lettuce evaluation, Jordanian olive, Kenyan seeds, Hybrid animals, FAOSTAT news

Qatari botanic garden is providing training in food security, and more. Good for them.
The European Evaluation Network’s lettuce boffins have themselves a meeting. Pretty amazing this made it to FreshPlaza, and with that headline.
The Jordan Times pretty much mangles what is a perfectly nice, though inevitably nuanced, story about the genetic depth of Jordan’s olives.
In Kenya’s seed system, whatever is not forbidden in proposed new legislation…may not be enough.
Conservation through hybridization.
FAOSTAT now has a bit that gives you access to national agricultural census data. Which sounds quite important but give us a few days to check it.

May 30, 2022May 30, 2022

Brainfood: First farmers, First dogs, First olives, Food sharing, Seed longevity, Seed germination, Conservation & climate change, Urban gardens, Seed movement, Machine learning, Web crawling, Imaging spectroscopy

Ancient DNA maps ‘dawn of farming’. Hunter-gatherers from Europe and the Middle East mixed and settled down as farmers in Anatolia, then spread to Europe.
The Australian dingo is an early offshoot of modern breed dogs. The dingo originated from grey wolves, and found itself isolated, much earlier than all other dog breeds.
The first use of olives in Africa around 100,000 years ago. Hunter-gatherers used the wild olive long before they domesticated either it or the dog.
Intestinal parasites in the Neolithic population who built Stonehenge (Durrington Walls, 2500 BCE). Neolithic people and their dogs ate the same things.
Comparative seed longevity under genebank storage and artificial ageing: a case study in heteromorphic wheat wild relatives. Seeds of the same crop wild relatives species but with different shapes have different seed longevities.
Stepping up to the thermogradient plate: a data framework for predicting seed germination under climate change. But do heteromorphic seeds have different germination requirements too? Here’s how to find out.
Conservation interventions can benefit species impacted by climate change. Biodiversity was helped with the effects of climate change in 30% of cases, especially if interventions were targeted on specific species. Genebanks available for comment.
Urban conservation gardening in the decade of restoration. Speaking of interventions…
South and/or north: an indigenous seed movement in South Korea and the multiple bases of food sovereignty. Wait, what about the genebank though?
Perspectives in machine learning for wildlife conservation. Surely if you can use fancy tech and maths to monitor cheetahs, monitoring crop wild relative populations and landraces should be a doddle.
Quantifying an online wildlife trade using a web crawler. Surely if you can crawl the web for evidence of illicit wildlife trade, crawling it to evidence of genetic erosion of crop diversity should be a doddle.
Plant beta-diversity across biomes captured by imaging spectroscopy. How about capturing beta-diversity within crop fields, though? A doddle, no? We’ve come a long way since those first Anatolian farmers and their dingoes.