Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Hugh Harries has a bone to pick with some lines on a map:
…Sailing ships, like floating coconuts, go with winds and tides. The introduction of coconut into the Atlantic and Caribbean by the Portuguese was via the Cape Verde islands not the Gulf of Guinea and annually, for more than 200 years, the Spanish carried hundreds of people and thousands of coconuts from the Philippines to the west coat of America (from Mexico to Peru) by a north Pacific route avoiding any islands…
We’ve blogged a few times about the System of Rice Intensification (SRI), and I don’t really want to do so again at any length now. Suffice to say that the jury is still out on whether it works as advertised. The reason I bring it up at all is that I’ve just found out from CTA via their Facebook page that there’s a new SRI manual out, which on further investigation led me to the mother lode of SRI manuals, which turns out to be part-supported by the Better U Foundation. Yeah, I never heard of it either. But it clearly has a great interest in SRI, not to mention an inventive web designer. The philanthropist behind it? Jim Carrey. Yeah, that Jim Carrey. That’s a pitch I’d have liked to witness.
The picture really is worth a thousand words, but if you still want the words…
…the Committee took up a draft resolution titled “International Year of Quinoa, 2012” (document A/C.2/65/L.16), with the representative of Bolivia noting that it had been the topic of constructive consultations and would be discussed in 2012. The issue of agricultural development and food security should remain an open item, and the Secretariat of the Second Committee would adopt the necessary provisions for that.
That was in December 2010. So where are we with that? Well, it looks like they’ll be discussing the whole thing in the next few days right here in Rome during the FAO Conference.
The idea seems to have some support from the indigenous people lobby:
Highlighting the agenda’s proposed half-day discussion on the right to food and food sovereignty, Saul Vicente Vasquez, a Forum member from Mexico, said the human right to food was not sufficiently dealt with in national legislation around the world. Not only should that right be recognized in State constitutions, he said, but the ability of traditional knowledge to ensure food for everyone must be advanced. Pointing out that indigenous types of food had not been adequately recognized, he also voiced support for proposals for an “International Year of Quinoa”.
Is it too late to throw in Andean roots and tubers?
The European Crop Protection Association is organizing a conference on Pollinators and Agriculture in Europe in Brussels in a few day’s time. It come hot on the heels of a report which you can download as a pdf or read as a beautifully produced online book. Here’s the money quote:
