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The economics of nutrition

Or nutrition in The Economist at any rate. Three — count them! — nutrition-related pieces in that venerable organ today for your delectation. Here come the money quotes:

People’s spending choices are a good way to assess levels of hunger. “Using data on people’s choice of what to eat leads to an estimate of hunger that is about half as large as the estimate using the standard method.” Which “typically involves fixing a calorie threshold—2,100 calories per day is a common benchmark—and trying to count how many people report eating food that gives them fewer calories than this number.”

How much can farming really improve people’s health? Haven’t read this yet, but Jeremy says the article takes you round the block, from farming has no impact, to the right kind of farming has great impact. Sounds like quite a ride.

Why small doses of vitamins could make a huge difference to the world’s health. “Public money should be concentrated not on supplying cheap food but on providing for those who do not control what they eat: babies and children.”

Meanwhile, away from the world of think-tanks and economic analysis:

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Perennial grains: the road not taken

“The whole world is mostly perennials,” says USDA geneticist Edward Buckler, who studies corn at Cornell University. “So why did we domesticate annuals?” Not because annuals were better, he says, but because Neolithic farmers rapidly made them better—enlarging their seeds, for instance, by replanting the ones from thriving plants, year after year. Perennials didn’t benefit from that kind of selective breeding, because they don’t need to be replanted. Their natural advantage became a handicap. They became the road not taken.

National Geographic goes back to the fork and rounds up the perennial grain story. Nothing new for readers here, of course, but good to see it in the mainstream. And if you want to see one reason why perennial grains are a good idea, just look at the picture above the article. Easily worth 1000 words.

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Keeping track of those pesky CRPs

We’ve been keeping an eye on the CGIAR change process, of course. Of course. Particularly as it relates to what they will do about agrobiodiversity, of course. Of course. But it really is not that easy to keep track of what’s happening with the megaprogrammes, or CGIAR Research Programmes (CRPs) as they are called now. The old CGIAR website is not much use. The blog on the change process they used to have doesn’t seem to be open to all any more. 2 Their knowledge sharing program doesn’t seem to focus much on the changes that are going on. And the page on the CRPs on the new Consortium website is of Saharan aridity. One is left to the information and communications shops of the individual Centres for the latest news on the development of the CRPs, and just recently ICRAF, IRRI, and IFPRI have indeed obliged. But each in their interestingly different ways, and still not a huge amount of evidence of system thinking, at least on the communications side. Anyway, interesting to see a whole (sub)theme in IFPRI’s policy CRP devoted to research on “policies and strategies that facilitate (or hinder) access to enhanced crops and animals, as well as the exchange of germplasm.” With a special reference to neglected and underutilized crops, no less. Alas with nary a mention of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, though. Presumably that will be dealt with elsewhere in the CRPs? No, wait…