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Quinoa in 2012?

…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?

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British Library has online stuff on agrobiodiversity shock

This page is from the tractate Kilayim (which translates as ‘of two kinds’) which deals with the laws regarding forbidden mixtures of species in agriculture, breeding and clothing. It forms part of Zera’im (Seeds), one of the six divisions or orders of the Mishnah. Added to the text is Moses Maimonides’s commentary translated from the original Arabic. The diagrams show ways of dividing up plots of land to grow permitted types of seeds and mixed species. This book itself was printed in Naples in 1492 by Joshua Solomon Soncino, and was the first to contain the complete text of the Mishnah.

One of the many treasures awaiting you at the British Library, this one in the gallery section. And there’s more to come.

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US lawmakers taking irony supplements

Missed this first time around, but courtesy of the magic of interconnectivity — Thanks Sam — I am able to reflect on some reflections.

If you’re eager to improve the food (and other) security of smallholder farmers, or the nutritional status of young people you might, once, have looked to the US to lead the way, at least as far as smallholder farmers and young people in other countries, poor countries, are concerned. At home? No such luck.

Headline

As Alex Tabarrok said in his post Not from the Onion, over at Marginal Revolution, “The headline says it all”.

Tabarrok quotes extensively from the Washington Post article that furnished the fine headline above. I can do no better than to quote him.

[A]nyone who argues against making school meals healthier because it’s too expensive at the same time as they vote for keeping billions of dollars in farm subsidies is not concerned about expenses. What unites the bill is not ideology but protection of agribusiness.

Say it isn’t so!

Not a peep out of the G20 meeting, yet; although much has been said about controlling prices, the only mentions of subsidies I’ve found are in the context of biofuels which, according to the US, “are job creators, not hunger villain” (sic). (I don’t suppose they could be both?) Far keener intellects than mine have considered the influence of rich-world agricultural subsidies on poor-world food insecurity, and the overall message is that they malevolent.

It’s just a shame, I suppose, that what happens to smallholder farmers and poorly nourished young people at home more or less mirrors what happens to them in other countries, poorer countries.