Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Biodiversity? We don’t need no stinkin’ biodiversity.
A cloned steer has won the same prize it (in a manner of speaking) won two years ago. At least it says something about judges’s consistency, except, of course, that they knew. Susan Schneider at the Agricultural Law blog examines the case from all angles, and comes up unhappy.
A report from the Russian press agency Novosti suggests that the Housing Corporation that has been granted the land occupied by the Pavlovsk collection of the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry (VIR), pending a further court appeal, has banned scientists from working on the collection.
According to the report, Nikita Stepanov, director of the housing fund’s local branch, wrote to Fyodor Mikhovich, the Pavlovsk Experiment Station’s director:
“He has sent me a letter, in which he prohibits the Pavlovsk station and me, the director, to appear at our collection of fruit and berries, saying this is their property and I must stay away from it,” the station’s acting director Fyodor Mikhovich said.
He said Stepanov accused him of “violating the property rights.”
I suppose keeping the scientists away could lend some truth to the outrageous claim that the land is idle. We know no more.
Penny has an intriguing idea about black rice:
“Dr Xu says he’d like to see Louisiana farmers growing black rice.”
Or, we could just buy it from the countries where it is indigenous to. That way, the farmers who actually developed it would benefit from producing it.
She has reasons, too, good ones.