Featured: Economics

Kevin Mayes has been thinking about ecological economics in light of capital intensive farming:

Nature recognises only thermodynamic efficiency. Economic efficiency is merely a human artifice.

Not sure about that “merely,” but it is a provocative thought.

In the UK, Herefordshire’s Museum of Cider is picking up national recognition for its genebank of heritage apple trees. The BBC’s canonical autumnal apple story comes a little early this year.
Speaking of iconic apples, Kazakhstan is scaling up efforts to bring back the Aport, the giant heirloom that once made Almaty famous. No word of museums, though. Or cider.
Over in the Philippines, Department of Environment and Natural Resources is beefing up its rattan genebank to keep pace with demand, with forest stewards in Bukidnon planting seedlings to match. Furniture makers need genebanks as much as cider makers.
Sri Lanka’s pre-Green Revolution heirloom rice varieties, purana haal, are being eyed for their resilience and disease-management potential. Good thing they’re in the national genebank.
Saudi Arabia’s Jazan terraced coffee farms are turning into rural and ecotourism hotspots, proving not all agrobiodiversity needs to be in a genebank to survive. But it helps.