Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
It may not be the thing that’s at the top of people’s agendas in Japan at the moment, but one does wonder what the long-term effect of the tsunami will be on the satoyama of the region, their agrobiodiversity and the people who maintain it. 1 The BBC series on the satoyama from a few years back is no longer available on the BBC’s website, but some of the documentaries can be found elsewhere. 2
I’m sure our readers do not have to be reminded that they can follow the deliberations of the Fourth Session of the Governing Body of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture online. Almost as good as being there in a fancy hotel in Bali. As ever, we will publish all gossip, the more scandalous the better.
Robert is unimpressed by at least one of the CGIAR’s 40 talents, “biological control of two devastating insect pests”.
This was about fixing what other researchers had broken when they shipped infected South American cassava to Africa. I understand it was fixed by finding a natural enemy in South America and bringing that to Africa as well.
It was great that the CGIAR did this, and employed an entomologist to do it, but there would have alternative suppliers aplenty. Any decent entomologist could have done that.
So wouldn’t this have happened anyway, perhaps a little bit later? If so the counter-factual is “basically the same result” (no impact). Entirely different thing from investing in a breeding program. Or a genebank.
And he has a nice little coda on using such efforts as a tool for extortion.
The collaborative work of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has resulted in development impacts on a scale that is without parallel in the international community.
And there are 40 of them, more than half in crop improvement, half a dozen in natural resources management, a few in the policy arena. Anyone out there disagree? Anything left out? Anyone think some of “impacts” included are not so great after all? Let us know.
Let me start the ball rolling. I happen to think that putting together and maintaining the international germplasm collections, and placing them under the aegis of the International Treaty, is a significant technical and policy achievement in its own right. After all, they underpinned all that crop improvement. Maybe that doesn’t count as an “impact.” But perhaps it should.
For what it’s worth, I have enormous admiration for IFPRI and its products. Not that they give a damn about that, but I just want to get it out of the way before slamming them. First, the news item on a new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen doesn’t have a link to the new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen. Not to worry, though, Google is your friend, 3 and it’s not all that difficult to find the relevant page on the IFPRI website. But then the new interactive atlas of food security in Yemen turns out to be nice enough as to content, but highly frustrating to use. No way to download or export maps. I had to get the thing below (showing barley cultivation, for the record) through a screen grab. Yuch.
And no way to mash up the results with other stuff. Like, for example, barley accessions in Genesys. Which in contrast you can export in a number of ways.
Oh, sure, there are some words of explanation, if not excuse:
The online version does not require installing software but it is more limited in the sense that the underlying data cannot be accessed by the user (unlike in the case of the download of the data package).
But I don’t believe it would be that difficult to allow some sort of exporting online. Maybe I’m wrong. Someone tell me, please.
So, anyway, two maps which cry out to be looked at together, for example in Google Earth, and no way of doing so, at least that I can see. As I say, very frustrating. Who do I complain to? There someone in the CGIAR to whom I can go with a query about spatial data, right? Isn’t there?