- Reasons for the rising price of tea in the world more from the BBC [demand outstrips supply, drought in Kenya, Sri Lanka, India] (via @JINGTea)#
- London Yields: urban agriculture exhibition at The Building Centre from 9th April. Bringing food production into the urban fabric #
- Sustainablog: Monsanto’s started a blog: conversation with critics, or the same old PR? (via @greenmeme) #
- “entire international food aid programme amounts to only a fifth of what a single developed nation throws away in one year” Hilary Benn MP (Feeding Britain, the Smith Institute) #
- Feeding Britain: Smith Institute report on food security “How can we ensure food supply is resilient to global crises?” more from the Smith Institute #
- Royal Warrant Food & Drink Market more from Tiki Chris (via @tikichris) [But Heinz, Unilever, Nestle or Fortnums, Spink, Musks? - as listed in the Royal Warrant directory] #
- Season’s 1st Jersey Royal potatoes arrive this weekend. These are real NEW potatoes and only available in the UK. Eat! more from The Telegraph #
- “Humans have eaten 80,000 plant species in our history. Now, 3/4 of all human food comes from 8 species“. [From Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: Our Year of Seasonal Eating by Barbara Kingsolver] (via @zahirah)
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4 Comments
Re Kingsolver’s book. It’s a good read, inspirational and all that. But I’ve tried very hard to track down the source for her comment that 98% of all seeds come from six companies, with no luck at all. I happen to think that the statement is unhelpful, but I have not been able to get any response from Kingsolver, her husband, or her publishers.
Does that statement bother you? Does it affect how you see other statements she makes?
Jeremy – I share your unease about unattributed statements and find the seed company comment particularly hard to swallow. The claim that 8 species account for 75% of our food seems more likely, though I’ll do some research myself when I have a chance. In the meantime, I’ve added some judicious quote marks.
Thanks for the note!
That one is not so difficult. It is often said that only 4 species — rice, maize, wheat and potatoes — account for 75% of calorie intake. And maybe three — rice, wheat and maize — for 66%. FAOSTAT makes it easy to play with the numbers, but I’m never sure how much of maize, in particular, is diverted into animal feed.
Interesting that Professor Stephen Hopper, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, has called for cultivation of more diverse range of crops – cowpea, breadfruit, tamarind, pigeon peas etc – to counter world hunger:
“The world is currently fed primarily from just a dozen species – around 80 per cent of the world’s food comes from those few plants used in commercial agriculture. Yet there are more than 30,000 edible plants known on the planet, so it is baffling we are so reliant on so few species.
“Diversifying the range of crop species is a sensible approach and could ensure food is available from alternative crops should staples fail in any given season.”