- Farming for balanced nutrition: an agricultural approach to addressing micronutrient deficiency among the vulnerable poor in Africa. Dietary diversity is a good idea for many reasons.
- Cultivar characterization of Aegean olive oils with respect to their volatile compounds. Only two varieties, and they do differ.
- Beef Authentication and Retrospective Dietary Verification Using Stable Isotope Ratio Analysis of Bovine Muscle and Tail Hair. Back40 has an explanation of why this is more important than all the certification schemes in the world.
- Promoting native trees in shade coffee plantations of southern India: comparison of growth rates with the exotic Grevillea robusta. Some native species might be able to compete, more research needed.
- Regeneration of Vitellaria paradoxa and Parkia biglobosa in a parkland in Southern Burkina Faso. Vitellaria doing better, possibly because farmers are overharvesting Parkia seeds.
- Defining the poor by the rural communities of Burkina Faso: implications for the development of sustainable parkland management. It’s complicated.
- Does soil biota benefit from organic farming in complex vs. simple landscapes? Organic farming increases weed diversity. No word on what it does for birds, but…
- Species richness and composition of bird communities in various field margins of Poland. Some types of field margins are better than others. No word on what they do for weeds.
Nibbles: GBIF, Grains, Sorghum, Carnival, ECP/GR, Rabbits, Conference, Satoyama
- The evolution of the GBIF registry. If you need to ask, you don’t need to know. And if you don’t, you do.
- US farmers encouraged to try millets, sorghum — for birds. …
- … while in Kenya, Farmers turn to sorghum to boost their food security. They’re eating their beer.
- The latest Berry go Round blog carnival is up at Foothills Fancies. I liked the Red Filbert.
- The European Cooperative Programme for Plant Genetic Resources, known to its friends as ecp/gr, has a spiffy new website. But no RSS feed, so it’s unlikely we’ll be bringing you anything else of interest from that site.
- Battery rabbits back on the menu in England? A warren of contradictions, I tell you.
- International Conference on In Situ/On farm conservation and use of agrobiodiversity (fruit crops and wild fruit species) in Central Asia, 23-26 August, in Tashkent. Programme PDF here.
- “Japan should look to satoyama and satoumi for inspiration.” I thought it already had …