Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

March 10, 2023

Giving orphan crops an even break

Prabhu Pingali sets out the nutrition case for crop-neutral agricultural policy in an interview at Asterisk.

There’s a lot more talk about nutrition-sensitive agriculture and a lot more pronouncements about why this is important. However, most governments see this as an add-on, not a substitution. Rather than removing the existing supports or reducing the existing supports for staples, governments have just added supports for other crops. That creates some marginal improvement for some of the other crops, but your fundamentals don’t change. The crop-neutrality argument says: Treat all these crops on a level playing field and let market signals determine the supply responses.

Easier said than done, but there’s more in his chapter on Are the Lessons from the Green Revolution Relevant for Agricultural Growth and Food Security in the Twenty-First Century? in last year’s book Agricultural Development in Asia and Africa.

March 9, 2023

The dawn of farming revisited

Yeah, ok, here’s that cool map about the Fertile Crescent that I alluded to in a recent Nibble.

But do read the blog posts by Chad Mulligan the thesis of Graeber and Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything with regards to the origins of farming Part 1 and Part 2.

In chapters six and seven of The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow present a very different account of the origins of agriculture than that found most conventional history books. This account, they say, contradicts many of the assumptions made by the authors of Big History, who tend to portray farming as ineluctably leading to inequality, hierarchy, private property, violence, and centralized states.

Instead, they argue that early farming societies were no more hierarchical than their predecessors, and may have even been less violent more egalitarian than their hunter-gatherer neighbors. The imply that cultivation may have even initially began as a strategy expressly designed to avoid succumbing to the values of hierarchy and violence. They are especially critical of Yuval Noah Harari’s Russian reversal-style metaphor of “wheat domesticating us.” This, they say, is yet another “Garden of Eden-type narrative,” except with “wheat taking the place of the snake.”

March 7, 2023

Svalbard roundup

I guess by now the whole world knows that this year is the 15th anniversary of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, that there was another deposit last week, that the number of seed samples is now over 1.2 million from 98 genebanks, and that you can take a virtual tour of the place. But it’s a slow news day…

March 6, 2023March 3, 2023

Brainfood: Food biodiversity, Diversification, New crops, GMO maize, African livestock, Greek innovation clusters, Amazonian native cacao

Food Biodiversity as an Opportunity to Address the Challenge of Improving Human Diets and Food Security. Biodiversity and food security can be mutually supportive, but you need education, research and inclusion, say educators and researchers.
Achieving win-win outcomes for biodiversity and yield through diversified farming. Biodiversity and yield both win in only about a quarter of cases. But humanity does not live by yield alone, right?
Accelerated Domestication of New Crops: Yield is Key. Ooops, looks like humanity does live by yield alone after all.
Genetically Modified Maize: Less Drudgery for Her, More Maize for Him? Evidence from Smallholder Maize Farmers in South Africa. No, wait, man lives by yield alone, but not woman.
Climate Change’s Impact on Agriculture and Food Security: An Opportunity to Showcase African Animal Genetic Resources. Forget GMO maize, Africa needs to develop its own agrobiodiversity…
Friend or Foe? The Role of Animal-Source Foods in Healthy and Environmentally Sustainable Diets. …and it need not be bad for either health or the environment.
AgriDiverCluster: An Innovative Cluster for the Utilization of Greek Biodiversity and Plant Genetic Resources. Maybe the Greeks have a way to make it not bad for either health or the environment. By vertical integration, it looks like.
Socio-ecological benefits of fine-flavor cacao in its center of origin. Amazonian cacao farmers also seem to have a way to vertically integrate.

February 27, 2023February 23, 2023

Brainfood: Cryo at CIP, Cryo everywhere, Citrus conservation, Seed storage, Pollen double

The world’s largest potato cryobank at the International Potato Center (CIP) – Status quo, protocol improvement through large-scale experiments and long-term viability monitoring. It’s been a long road, but they’re almost there…
Overcoming Challenges for Shoot Tip Cryopreservation of Root and Tuber Crops. …but there’s a bit further to go for other roots and tubers….
Conserving Citrus Diversity: From Vavilov’s Early Explorations to Genebanks around the World. …and citrus.
Seed Longevity — The Evolution of Knowledge and a Conceptual Framework. The road goes on forever.
The 3D Pollen Project: An open repository of three-dimensional data for outreach, education and research. The road has to begin somewhere.
Pollen Cryobanking—Implications in Genetic Conservation and Plant Breeding. And we’re off…