- Crowdsourcing the Global Nutrition Report.
- Which will not cover the Neanderthals.
- Azolla genome project meets crowdfunding target, gets love from BGI.
- Would that contribute to Evergreen Agriculture?
- I bet breadfruit would, but New Scientist has put an article about that interesting tree behind a paywall. But, see this teaser…
- Some people think the potato bean will.
- Another genebank in Canada. Not crops, though, I suspect.
- Saving the camel in Rajasthan.
- ICRISAT gets a new DG.
- Podcast on the history of American beer. Perfect note on which to wish you all a good rest of the weekend.
Garrity on `Evergreen Agriculture’: He doesn’t know what he is talking about. He gives a kicking to `monocultures’ – always the sign of an ignorance of natural ecology, where there is lots of natural monodominant vegetation, often in stressed enviroments (climate change, anyone?). You can have all the benefits of farm access to trees without intercropping – a disaster in dry areas as trees gobble up the water. Where I live in Scotland is a model of `trees and fields’ with hedges and woodland for the trees and treeless fields for food. In England hedges with trees are habitually deeply ditched to stop the trees grabbing water from the crop. Recently I was on a flight from Geneva to Amsterdam – looking out of the window and seeing no `agroforestry’ at all, but lots of managed watershed protection and woodlot forestry between pastures and fields. Why should Africa not get the advice it deserves: to segregate woodland and fields? ICRAF should have been located in Costa Rica, where agroforestry works (and was pioneered) rather than Nairobi. Who is paying for all this?