Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
The Eleventh regular session of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA-11) is on in Rome all this week. You can follow the deliberations day by day courtesy of IISD. Better than being there. No, really.
Worldwatch Institute is also taking an interest.
And of course the agenda and all the background documentation are online.
“One picture is worth a thousand words” department: The Time feature I linked to in an earlier post has a fascinating photo essay associated with it, showing the weekly food consumption of 16 families around the world. I hadn’t noticed it until Jeremy pointed it out to me. Seems to me that if you’re trying to stay away from processed foods and have a nice, healthy, balanced diet you’re best off living in Sicily, Egypt, Mexico or Bhutan. Would be great to do something similar at the variety level, for example looking at the diversity within potatoes or wheat used by different families around the world.
Over at The Daily Kos Devilstower has produced an entertaining and (I think) fair and honest appraisal of the hypotheses swirling around colony collapse disorder. What I found most interesting about the summary is that Devilstower gives his/her own estimates of each one being right or wrong and then offers a poll where readers can give their own estimates. When I voted, the results were:
That strikes me as eminently sensible (because it fits with my own prejudices, obviously). But what would have been really neat — though perhaps impossible to do on Daily Kos — would have been a before and after poll. Give and estimate before reading the piece, then after reading the piece, and see whether all that fine work by Devilstower had any impact. I would hope it did, but a skeptical voice deep within whispers “no”.
Before you all start responding to my recent post by pointing me in the direction of the 2002 Convention on Biological Diversity paper on the impact of trade liberalization on agricultural biodiversity, let me say that I have read it, and that I stick to my call for more thorough analysis. First, despite its title, the CBD paper concentrates on the presumed effects of liberalization – via changes in land use and production intensification – on biodiversity in general rather than agricultural biodiversity in particular, something that was also discussed by an older IUCN paper. Second, it repeats a few too many times how complicated the issue is. And finally, it provides little in the way of empirical data.
From IAALD, news of a workshop sponsored by GTZ and FAO, on “Communicating Knowledge: From good practice to systematic change.” The conference web site gives access to the Agenda and Papers, and at first glance there doesn’t seem to be anything about blogs or blogging. Maybe the participants will raise the topic. It does seem an odd omission, but maybe I’m biassed.