Jeremy Cherfas

April 22, 2009June 28, 2009

“Food prices: What goes up must come down”

Oh yeah? I’ve taken our headline directly from Mariann Fischer Boel in full rhetorical flight.

When the price on wheat went up last year, I wondered quite publicly why bread prices skyrocketed when the share of wheat in the cost of producing bread was relatively low. Back then, I was told by industry that the share of agricultural raw material was in fact much higher and that rising energy prices also had an impact. Now with wheat and energy prices having dropped dramatically during the last year, I think it is legitimate to wonder again and ask: why aren’t bread prices following suit?

Good question? Or naive political drivel? You be the judge.

April 22, 2009

First cow

What with all the brouhaha over not merely the First Organic Garden but also the First Dog, our chums over at InfoFarm have turned their far-sighted historical eyes on other, more productive, animals that have graced the White House lawns. I have just one piece of advice for Michelle; sheep once destroyed a couple of years worth of pea-breeding for me, and even a small herd of beeves is hard to fence out of a garden.

April 22, 2009April 22, 2009

Nibbles: Japan, Bananas, GMO, Bees, Squirrels, Mangroves, Climate change and indigenous people, Goji, Svalbard, Heirloom rice, Dataporn

Japan’s unemployed end up farming.
Somewhat uninformed comments about the perfection of the banana.
“…traditional genetic crosses outperform genetically modified crops by a wide margin.”
Alice Waters takedown.
Brits throw money at bees.
Red squirrel missing link found through DNA fingerprinting. Red squirrel pie, anyone? Ok ok, make it grey.
Mexican mangroves in trouble.
“Indigenous Peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact.”
Go go goji.
Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister waxes lyrical about genebanks.
So there’s a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. No, not Golden Rice. Via.
Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library decide on a citation format. Or not. whatever.

April 21, 2009

Scientia pro publica

GrrlScientist launched Scientia pro Publica a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday saw the second edition. SPP, to save digits, is a carnival of general science blogging that goes some way to replacing Tangled Bank, which seems to have gone extinct in a burst of random inactivity. As its title proclaims, SPP is Science for the People, and as GrrlScientist, who I guess felt the lack of Tangled Bank more acutely than the rest of us slobs, says, it exists to celebrate and “to promote the value of communicating science, nature and medicine with the public”.

There’s not a whole heap of agricultural stuff in there, apart from our recent post on heirloom tomatoes. I’m not going to whinge about that, as I now realize that we’ve got your all day, every day carnival of agricultural biodiversity right here. That said, there are a couple of posts that interested me. There’s Kelsey’s post on what happens to cigarette butts, ideal fodder for quiet moments in an awkward conversation. And there’s Tim’s post on triage in conservation which — wouldn’t you know it? — has nary a word on agriculture or crop wild relatives. (Oh dear, I seem to have whinged.)

April 17, 2009

Bees for Development

A new web site — beesfordevelopment.org — is your one-stop-shop for information about beekeeping anywhere in the world. The site recently announced new funding from the Wales for Africa Fund of the Welsh Assembly Government and the Rowse Family Trust that is allowing it to offer a specific African Beekeeping Information Portal. You need to register, which is a minor inconvenience, but I’ll bet there are lots of goodies once you are in.