Did I miss this first time around? Or has it just been released? Either way, you know you want to know what McKinsey & Company produced for the World Economic Forum in Davos. Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture: A roadmap for stakeholders sets it out really clearly.
How to move agriculture forward
From the Department of Deafening Reports: 1
IFPRI wraps up its conference on Leveraging Agriculture for Improving Nutrition and Health with an “initial draft synthesis of its conclusions,” described by IFPRI DG Shenggen Fan as a “living document, subject to further debate”. So what are you waiting for? Get on over there and subject it to further debate.
Not to be outdone, the World Bank has released Agriculture and development: a brief review of the literature, a Policy Research Working Paper. Here’s the Abstract:
After 20 years of neglect by international donors, agriculture is now again in the headlines because higher food prices are increasing food insecurity and poverty. In the coming years it will be essential to increase food productivity and production in developing countries, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and with smallholders. This however requires finding viable solutions to a number of complex technical, institutional and policy issues including land markets, research on seeds and inputs; agricultural extension; credit; rural infrastructure; storage; connection to markets; rural nonfarm employment and food price stabilization. This paper reviews what the economic literature has to say on these topics. It discusses in turn the role played by agriculture in the development process and the interactions between agriculture and other economic sectors; the determinants of the Green Revolution and discuss the foundations of agricultural growth; issues of income diversification by farmers; approaches to rural development; and finally issues of international trade policy and food security which are at the root of the crisis in agricultural commodity volatility in the past few years.
Pocket pigs find a use
After more than three decades of breed conservation and selection, a livestock research station in southeastern Taiwan has made a name for itself by selling minipigs locally for experimental purposes.
Are these minipigs the same as pocket pigs? Oh, I do hope so.
Iceland shows Leadersheep on film
Again thanks to DAD-Net for more livestock videos. This time from Iceland, which has a local sheep breed called the Leadersheep. No, really.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67eiH9jYOtABotanic gardens get the treatment
We probably don’t give botanic gardens the attention they deserve. So it’s a pleasure to point out that Biodiversity and Conservation has a special issue out on Botanic Gardens in the Age of Climate Change, with a focus on Europe. Lots of interesting stuff in there, including from some old friends.
And since we’re on the subject of published papers, I’d like to say what a good idea it is to include an illustration in the abstract of a paper. I had not come across this before I stumbled on the example here on the left in a recent Scientia Horticulturae paper on Citrus phylogeny.