Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
…wild species continue to be the mother lode of genetic material for making agricultural crops more productive, or more resistant to pests, disease, and drought.
Well, it’s not much, and the few, admittedly unsatisfactory, figures we have on their monetary value are not quoted, but it is good to see crop wild relatives mentioned so explicitly in a discussion of the value of biodiversity.
Chaffey’s regular words of wisdom on anything botanical. Well, mostly wise. But more on that later…
That’s from a nibble a few days ago. The qualification concerned Pavlovsk, and Jeremy has now set the record straight. Incidentally, the latest update on the situation from the Vavilov Institute itself has the first decent map of Pavlovsk I’ve seen. Here it is. Explore for yourself: no Street View, alas.
“Malnutrition,” “hidden hunger,” and “stunting” are just a few of the buzzwords currently being heard throughout the development community.
Buzzwords? Let’s hear it for the buzzword that will render them obsolete: “biofortification.”
Coincidentally, or not, The Lubin Files points to a useful page of FAO statistics on nutrition.
A final dispatch from the front lines of agrobiodiversity conservation and use. That is, the 6th Henry A. Wallace/CATIE Inter-American Scientific Conference on “Agrobiodiversity in Mesoamerica — From Genes to Landscapes” at CATIE in Costa Rica.
The participants at the last day of the 6th Wallace Symposium shared a warm glow. The people who I chanced to talk to all raved about the conference. Although agrobiodiversity suffers from being a vague term, it has the attractive ability to bring together a crowd of scientists from worldwide institutes, who obviously see great relevance in each other’s research. Everyone can appreciate the needs of farmers for a suite of integrated and sustainable options, including biodiversity at all scales, to enable them to cope with markets, pests and diseases, soils, climate, and — maybe most importantly — changes.
CATIE is in a prime position to integrate options with its stronghold in forest and agroecology research, watershed management, enterprise development and its international collections of cacao, coffee, peach palm and many other crops. Dr Ronnie De Camino, CATIE’s Deputy Director, stressed to the audience that the drivers of change are not slowing down and our actions are too slow. What is needed is a revolution. After this conference, I will certainly be looking to CATIE and the Mesoamerican region to lead the way in this agrobiodiversity revolution.
Global Giving, mentioned yesterday as a possible source of funds, is running a Global Open Challenge: projects have 30 days in which to secure themselves a spot on Global Giving’s roster of projects. And there are 3 days left. So just for fun, I skimmed through 150 projects to find those that are directly connected with agriculture, ignoring some that might be borderline, such as nutrition projects. Here’s the list:
Personally, I wouldn’t support this last one, because it describes Moringa and amaranth as “super-foods”. They’re good, but to pin your hopes for “a long term solution to poverty, malnutrition & food insecurity” on two species — any two species — is to miss the point comprehensively.