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CIAT and climate change and blogging

“Using blogs and new media to tell the story of climate change and adaptation”, did you say? Let CIAT show you how. On the same day, their multifarious blogs sport a post on the new climate change book on the block, “Crop Adaptation to Climate Change,” from Wiley, to which they have contributed massively. And also a handy summary of the CGIAR Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security Research Program’s “Mapping hotspots of climate change and food insecurity in the global tropics,” CIAT being the lead centre in CCAFS. There’s also a press release on the hotspots report. However, if the word “hotspots” conjures up visions of the possibility of precisely and reasonably narrowly targeted interventions, beware. In this game, as in many, I suppose, it really does all depend. This below is as good a candidate for the money map as any. But you really do have to read the whole thing, and look at all the maps. And there’s a lot of them. They’ll all be available as Google Earth files soon, right guys?

LATER: And they make it into Time!

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Variety Savers of Europe try to unite

The European Network of Breed and Seed Savers is a website for listing all keepers of indigenous livestock breeds and culivators of indigenous cultivated plants found in Europe. Variety-Savers should be used to network, to share information, to list events and to sell products and services relating to conservation of European agrobiodiversity.

Just off the ground, and only 14 members so far, but this looks like an interesting initiative. Especially if it manages to bring formal-sector genebanks closer together with on-farm conservation practitioners and amateur heirloom enthusiasts. You do have to register, but it’s fairly painless, and the website provides some fancy social networking tools. Very best wishes!

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Googling crop production

Speaking of Google, can it be used to map crop production, the way it can be used to map outbreaks of flu or dengue? Well, according to Google Insight for Search, this is the pattern of searching for the word “soybean” you get for China.

And this is one of the nicer maps of soybean production in China I was able to find online:

Not bad, but not great. Pretty much the same for Brazil. I guess it was worth a try, but if you want production maps for crop X, your best bet is still to just search Google Images for, well “X production map.” Or maybe ask the CGIAR or FAO GIS tribe. No, wait…

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EU needs to coordinate to strategize to conserve genetic diversity

Last week we briefly Nibbled the Seeds for a Sustainable Future conference organised by European Greens and held yesterday. Despite the very short notice, an agrobiodiverse mole tunnelled her way into the proceedings and sent back a report.

Claudia Olazabal, Head of Biodiversity, which comes under the Nature Conservation & Biodiversity Unit at DG ENVI, asked “Is agricultural biodiversity part of the equation?” in her presentation on diversity of genetic resources in the context of international commitments and the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy. During which presentation, she referred to Action 10, that “The Commission and Member States will encourage the uptake of agri-environmental measures to support genetic diversity in agriculture and explore the scope for developing a strategy for the conservation of genetic diversity.”

A questioner managed to ask: Hadn’t the Commission been working on just such a strategy since 1994? 1

To which Mrs Olabazal extemporized thusly:

“There are lots of different actors in the Commission who work on agricultural genetic diversity – Directorate General for Environment, Directorate General for Agriculture, Directorate General for Research … we need to coordinate … “

Ah yes. A need to coordinate across Europe’s complex network of interests. It wasn’t like that in 1994, when everything was at least under one roof. But then again, maybe that’s why there still isn’t really a strategy for the conservation of genetic diversity …

Alas, I think you’ve missed your chance to tell the EU what you think of its “Options and analysis of possible scenarios for the review of the European Union legislation on the marketing of seed and plant propagating material”.