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Another Committee on World Food Security report

I knew I’d forget one:

The webcast is live now.

Also, since I’m at it, here’s a useful blog post on the other CFS report, the one on “Nutrition and Food Systems,” from one of the authors, summarizing eight ways why the report is different. This is what resonated with me most:

Third, it is, subversively, a bit radical. Statements such as “The risks of making well intentioned but inappropriate policy choices are much smaller than the risks of using a lack of evidence as an argument for inaction” are fairly heretical for many nutrition investors guided by Lancet 2008 and 2013. For the more market based interventions within the food system the hard evidence is usually not present and one has to trust educated best guesses and calculated risks as a guide to action.

Sometimes, you just have to do it.

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Giving wheat breeders something to really cheer about

Nice to see a story about germplasm evaluation by a genebank make it into the mainstream media in India.

In what is claimed to be the first global mega study, Indian agricultural scientists screened about 20,000 accessions of wheat germplasm conserved in the country’s gene bank to identify genes that can confer resistance against all types of fungal diseases affecting cereal grain grown worldwide.

But why now? The paper to which the story refers came out in December last year, and we included it in a Brainfoond in January. And, more importantly, why are the data not available on NBPGR’s Data Portal?

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Is data a bottleneck to PPP in conservation too?

Lawrence Haddad of GAIN has a blog post out on the “the data gaps that inhibit productive engagement between the public and the private spheres to advance nutrition.” It’s nicely summarized in a tweet.

Strikes me that many of the same things could be said about public-private partnerships in conservation of agricultural biodiversity too. Only more so.

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Reports galore for the CFS

It’s the time of year for major reports, I guess. Here’s what’s on the table:

You can follow the discussion on all these and more on the webcast of the 44th session of the Committee on World Food Security.

Maybe we should just have stayed hunters and gatherers?

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Brainfood: Antioxidant adzuki, Sorghum gaps, Natural rubber diversity, Non-flying geese