- Rhizowen does DIY tissue culture to clean up his tubers. And fails. This time.
- Farming First endorses biofortified sorghum.
- Good fences make good farmers.
- Is intercropping banana and coffee worthwhile in Uganda? “It depends,” sez Jeremy.
Plant and Animal Genome meeting unactionable?
We briefly noted Greg Baute’s thoughts on the genebank session of the Plant and Animal Genome Conference just ended. 1 For another point of view, here’s the take-home message from Pat Heslop-Harrison, editor of Annals of Botany.
[U]nlike the previous meetings, this week, I’m finding it hard to see what NEW areas we will be publishing from results being presented.
And lest you think that’s overdramatic, Pat’s list of areas that did emerge from the previous 18 PAG conferences is pretty astonishing. Not having been there, I can’t say whether there is indeed a big idea that somehow eluded Pat; it seems very unlikely. If, however, the big idea is how to stay afloat on the sea of genome data, then yes, I guess we are still waiting for the liferafts to inflate.
Nibbles: Genebank, Rice, State of the World, Experiments, Lathyrus, Malaria and lactase persistence, Advice, CWR, Feed
- The Ethiopian Institute of Biodiversity has been up to something, but it is hard to be sure what.
- IRRI is also up to something — Green super rice — but again it is hard to be sure what. Not golden at any rate.
- CIAT picks its favourites from the State of the World 2011 report.
- More than anyone has any right to want to know about the history and future of agricultural experimentation, but fascinating nonetheless.
- The nutritive value and toxicity of grasspea and its relatives.
- Milk may or may not provide some protection from malaria.
- Nutrition advice, filtered for you. Jeremy sez “I like No. 6.”
- Irish launch crop wild relatives website.
- The feed quality of crop residues gets the treatment.
Agricultural biodiversity crucial to the agricultural “revolution”
I’ve started dabbling in the marshy shallows around the deep pool of my ignorance of the modern history of agriculture, and one thing has become even more obvious.
Mixed farming — mixed species of crop as well as mixed kingdoms of plants and animals — was without a doubt the sine qua non of both phases of the long, slow increases in English farm productivity from about 1500 to 1850 and beyond. 2
I get all this from two fascinating and eminently readable papers by Robert C. Allen. The first 3 uses detailed estimates of nitrogen flows to build a dynamic model that simulates the amount of nitrogen available to plants under various types of management. The second 4 examines a variety of estimates of changes in overall agricultural productivity in England to ask whether there was indeed a revolution, and if so, when did it take place. The result is a much more nuanced picture of how agriculture changed, at least for me.
It starts after the Black Death, when a lack of labour shifted land from arable to pasture and increased the number of animals. “More animals meant more manure, and more manure meant higher grain yields”. Alternatively (or additionally) there’s so called up-and-down or convertible husbandry, in which land alternates between arable and pasture with a fairly long timescale, often measured in decades. Although animals are grazing and dunging on the pasture this is not quite the same as the manure hypothesis, because it is natural deposition and fixation of nitrogen from the air rather than cycling through the animals that increases the amount of nitrogen in pasture soils. Animals, again. And a final factor is the increasing use of legumes, with peas and beans replacing barley and oats as the spring crop, and then the use of clovers and their gradual codification in the famous Norfolk rotation of turnips, barley, clover and wheat. The crucial insight here is not merely that the clover fixed nitrogen, but that it and the turnips supported livestock, whose manure added more nitrogen to the soil stock.
“The barley and wheat produced beer and bread for the people, while the turnips and clover fed sheep and cattle”.
There’s lots more of great interest in the two papers I cited, but for me there are three very clear take-home messages. First, considerable increases in yield took place long before it became possible to add energy-intensive nitrogen directly to the soil, indeed, long before anyone knew anything about the importance of nitrogen as a limiting plant nutrient. Secondly, this depended absolutely on farms and fields using different crops, and livestock played a central role. Finally, it took a long time for yields to rise, but having risen they stayed high.
Any messages in there for current agriculture, do you suppose?
Nibbles: Sudan, Quinoa, Book, Nutrition, Research
- Interesting take on Sudan’s vote; the South has the water, and yet, currently, the food insecurity. What next?
- Quinoa “isn’t lifting us out of poverty … But we are living better.”
- Agrobiodiversity Management for Food Security: A Critical Review. Book, due in April. h/t PAR.
- US seed industry concentration continues. Through an intellectual property lens.
- New IFPRI publication on agriculture, nutrition, health. “Agriculture is the only realistic way for most people to get the nutrition they need.” Can I get a “ramen”?
- USD32 million “to harness science to improve food security for millions of people in the developing world”. Get some while it lasts.