The Lubin Files

How Rice Farmers Clean up the Environment, Conserve Biodiversity, Raise More Food, Make Higher Profits

We recently obtained a copy of this 1991 FAO publication regarding integrated pest management in Asia, and added it to the FAO Corporate Document Repository.

It has generated a lot of enthusiasm amongst our colleagues who deal with integrated pest management.

Wheat Trade Statistics: Pre 1930

We recently had a question from a researcher in Florence who was looking for statistics on wheat trade in Great Britain from before 1930.

This type of material is found in the library's IIA Collection.  I found two publications that would be useful to this researcher:

The London Grain, Seed and Oil Reporter (1915-1943)
Agricultural Statistics of Great Britain (1902-1931)

Because of the age of these materials, they can't be scanned, but they can be consulted in person in our library.

Letter from a student

I really liked this letter that we just received from a student in South Korea:

Hello.  My name is Y-- and I am a student from South Korea.  Recently, I read a book about world hunger. I feel shame after reading it. And I will fight against world hunger. First of all I want to know more about world hunger.  The book says FAO can share report with anyone who wants to see it. So, I write this letter.

Could you send me it?

We will send her:

• links to FAO's site for children  (available in Chinese, French, English, Spanish, Italian and Japanese) 
• A link to FAO's hunger petition
• FAO's portal to facts and statistics about World Hunger
• Hopefully her parents might be able to help her through the State of Food and Agriculture, or the State of Food Insecurity in the World, either of which is likely to be the "report" her book referred to.

Where to look for info on transboundary diseases

Cab Abstracts -- the first place I would look. Has mostly abstracts and some full text

Cab Animal Health and Production Compendium -- Provides a good overview. Includes links to articles in the abstract database as well as CABI Distribution Maps for diseases.

Proquest -- also covers this topic. Here, you can find more full text, and you can also set up a search alert to be informed when new articles are added to the database.

Science Direct -- has good coverage from the scientific research point of view. You will also find full text here, and set up search alerts.

Food Security Statistics from 2000

We were recently contacted by someone who has come across the well publicized figure of 1 billion people in a state of food insecurity.  This researcher wanted to know if we could provide statistics on the figure from 2000.

I found the answer here, on FAO's hunger portal.  This portal provides the current year's figure with historical figures back to 1971.  It also displays FAO's interactive hunger map and a list of related links like the Millenium Development Goals.

World Food Crisis 2006-2008. FAO's response

We recently received a reference question from someone who was trying to document FAO's earliest efforts in reporting and channelling a response to the most recent food crisis.

Here is a summary of what we found:

"Increases in cereal and commodity prices"  -- "Food Outlook" (June and November 2007)
"Inception of the Initiative on Soaring Food Prices" -- Press release (December 2007)
Initiative on Soaring Food Prices
"High Cereal Prices are Hurting Vulnerable Populations" -- Report (December 2007)
"Committee on World Food Security" -- Report (May 2007)
FAO Food Price Index
"State of Food Insecurity" -- 2008
High Level Conference on World Food Security -- 2008
How to Feed the World in 2050  -- 2009
World Summit on Food Security -- 2009

 

Amendments to FAO Basic Texts

Recently a researcher asked us to help him find if there were any significant recent amendments to the FAO Basic Texts.

The Basic Texts are available only online here, but we were not sure how often they are updated. In order to check for amendments that may not have been added to the website, you have to look in the FAO Conference Reports.

The Conference Reports are all available here, back to 1945.  After the 34th Session, they are available as searchable pdfs.  Search for the word "amendment" to find recent additions.

93-year-old article answers current question

A recent reference question led to a series of searches and ultimately was answered by a journal published nearly a century ago.

The requester sought information about the "Walker inversion method for sucrose apparent determination."  He was under the impression that the method was originally published in a FAO manual from 1979, for which he had only a partial citation.

It turned out that the manual in question was no. 14/3 of the serial entitled FAO Food and Nutrition Paper.  That issue, "Manuals of food quality control: 3. Commodities," was indeed published in 1979.  According to the foreword, it provides "methods useful for the examination of foods and for their chemical analysis."  It is divided by type of food, with most food items having several different methods of analysis.

The requester's incomplete citation indicated page 150, which was within the chapter about honey.  The heading reads "Apparent Sucrose Content in Honey."  Under Principle, it says "Based on the Walker (1917) inversion method."  At the bottom of the page appears a brief reference: Walker, H.S. (1917), J. Ind. Eng. Chem. 2, 490.

The Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry is the current name of a Korean publication and the former name (from 1909 to 1922) of a journal currently called Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, published by the American Chemical Society.  (Our library does not have a subscription to either one.)

The older journal was the one we wanted.  Amazingly, all of the articles from 1909 to 1922 are available online (at a cost) in pdf. The one our requester needed is here.

The full citation follows:

Walker, Herbert S. "A simplified inversion process for the determination of sucrose by double polarization." Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry 9.5 (May 1917): 490-492.

Artwork in the Plenary Hall - Mirko Basaldella

Sometimes, we get questions about the various works of art housed here at headquarters.

We found the following information about the artwork on the ceiling of the Plenary Hall.  It was made by the artist Mirko Basaldella, sometimes known as Mirko.

Survey related to plant genetic resources and intellectual property rights

The author featured in our last post, Muriel Lightbourne, also wrote

"Survey on the concurrent implementation of the FAO Treaty on plant genetic resources and of intellectual property rights." Intellectual Property Quarterly, 2:1 (2006), 131-148.

This article reports on the results of two questionnaires sent to 121 people and institutions, including academics, NGOs, professional bodies in the fields of plant breeding and legal protection of seeds, national and international agricultural organizations, and major seed companies.  The questions (some on defining intellectual property rights violations, others on research exemptions and other topics) themselves as well as the responses are interesting.

To obtain this article, please contact us at fao-library-reference [at] fao.org.