Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Kevin Painting on Housekeeping News:
I couldn’t agree more that category clouds are misleading for many reasons, principally because it might be seen as an indication of your editorial policy (viz. what is important rather than what happens to be the issues of the day).
What we should do about Categories and Tags? Do you want to be able to Tag? To create a folksonomy of agrobiodiversity? Leave a comment.
It was a year that saw oil prices rise to levels that had never before been imagined. And the world witnessed a decline in world grain production that outlined the the pitfalls of depending on the surplus of a handful of nations for a world food reserve. Nations met to discuss “the food challenge” in the context of a “world of energy shortages, rampant inflation, and a weakening trade and monetary system…”
Nope, not 2008, but 1974. The Lubin Files has links to the speech Henry Kissinger gave to the UN’s World Food Conference.
There’s been a bit of buzz on the intertubes recently about a shiny new portal on India’s biodiversity. At last, it is live, and I have had a preliminary play with it. The first thing to say is that it is very, very slick. The information is well presented and appears quickly. The second thing to say is that while there is definitely some information there about things agricultural, it is a little high level at the moment. But that could easily change. The portal is open source and open to users, so people who really know about farming in India can get in there and make it their own, with reports from the field, performance data, and who knows what else.
I wonder whether it would be possible to give them layers (I believe that’s the technical term) of information about, say, genebank accessions, or predicted climate changes, or crop suitability, or …
We’ve done a little much-needed upgrading, to the way the site works and the way it looks. A crack team of test elves swarmed all over the site, and didn’t report anything broken, but some of them are pretty slack. So if you find something that isn’t quite right, let us know.
Also, in response to a demand, we’ve put in a Category Cloud, which indicates what we write about. Personally, I find it a trifle misleading, but that’s a discussion we need to have among ourselves. Your thoughts, however, are most welcome. Thanks.
“More food at lower cost.”
Now there’s a headline packed with potential. Alas, that’s all it has at the moment, potential. Not to denigrate the science of Angharad R. Jones — known to his pals as Harry — and colleagues at the University of Bristol. ((The full paper is in Nature Cell Biology.)) They’ve done some nifty research into what makes plant root hairs grow. It’s a complex study involving a computer model of where the plant hormone ought to be, and the bottom line seems to be that it isn’t where the researchers thought it would be.
Great. A deeper understanding of the development of root hairs is important. Root hairs, after all, are the basis of the plant’s uptake of minerals and water. But the press release goes well beyond that:
This new understanding will be crucial in helping farmers to produce food sustainably and to reduce fertiliser waste, which can cause severe damage to ecosystems.
I’ve written the odd press release myself, and I know how hard it can be to interest reporters in the small individual bricks that make up the building that is scientific understanding. But this kind of reporting is, I fear, going to lead inevitably to overinflated expectations and crushing disappointment.
If anyone notices.