The FAO’s 2013 report this time includes a special section on quinoa. The year 2013 has been declared “International Year of Quinoa” by the United Nations General Assembly, a tribute to a little-known agricultural product with outstanding nutritional and agronomic properties grown almost exclusively in the Andes.

This is a very interesting take on rural food security from CGIAR guest bloggers, Matthew Fielding, Swedish International Agricultural Network Initiative and Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) and Tom Gill, SEI. 

The Bioenergy Strategy commits the UK Government to further work to investigate the merits of temporarily flexing or otherwise relaxing biofuels mandates at times of agricultural price pressures. The current paper presents work by Defra analysts to explore some of the potential implications of this idea.