- Global Crop Diversity Trust “on track” to reinvigorate 100,000 varieties, “one of the largest and most successful biological rescue efforts ever undertaken”. Jeremy says: “Kariba Dam.”
- More reasons to go perennial. And native to boot.
- Farmers go crazy with Striga-resistant maize.
- Design-a-pooch just around the corner, thanks to genome sequencing. Well it was all worth it then, wasn’t it.
- AVRDC teaches Solomons farmers to save seeds, grandma to suck eggs.
- Mulberries cryopreserved. Yay! Now for that productivity.
- Turning grapes to raisins, swords to plowshares, in Afghanistan.
- District Fishery Officer (In-charge) tells of guy “farming in a floodplain adjacent to Coler Beel under the same upazila and earns a net profit of Taka 9 lakh after selling 80 metric tons of harvested fish from the Beel last year.”
- Abaca: quantity or quality?
The Vegetable Garden
Frank Van Keirsbilck wrote to recommend his web site, The Vegetable Garden, to us. I’m happy to link to it. There’s a ton of information there, in four languages. ((So I’m not about to quibble over his use of the one I know well.)) The site looks funky and hand-rolled, which is charming although slightly cumbersome, and you may well find things of interest.
Nibbles: Paan, Homegardens, Yams, Apiculture, Sorghum, Asparagus, Vicuna
- Paan unwrapped — betel leaf, areca nut.
- “We were suffering; we had no food to eat so we tried to make a garden.”
- IITA comes up with technique to propagate yams through vine cuttings using carbonized rice husks as growth medium. Worlds beats path to Ibadan.
- The Virgin Fresh Apicultural Project is cool, but needs a new name.
- Sorghum makes big move from wallboards to gas and booze.
- Great Witley sweeter than Peruvian. No, not weed, dude.
- The vicuna: use it or lose it. They did, so they didn’t.
Blogging the big birthday: What would Darwin make of Climate Change
No-one escapes our appeal to celebrate Darwin’s birthday. This just in from Andy Jarvis:
Julián lost his blogging virginity just a few days ago with his post on “Is all climate change bad?.” His points are very valid. The wording in IPCC reports is that many crops become more productive with a 2 degree C temperature hike. It is only beyond that, which is expected 2050 onwards, that productivity significantly goes down on a global scale. And a lot can happen between now and then.
Given the historic day, I wondered what Darwin would make of all this? Surely he’d say that there’s nothing like a bit of selection pressure to bring about evolution. And ho boy do we need some evolution — let’s face it, the system is not working particularly well right now, and that is not limited to biology. Nothing like a crisis to bring about social change and promote innovation. So, on this day, I’d like to make a toast to selection pressure, and I hope that it stimulates changes in the fundamental system of agriculture to select against some of the bizarre, environmentally unsustainable practices and socially inequitable policies that are out there.
Find your feet
Find Your Feet is a UK charity that works with families in rural India and Malawi “to build a future free from hunger, poverty and discrimination”. They have a blog too, which I found by running down some of the ideas about Malawi’s success — or otherwise — in boosting agricultural production. I’m adding it to our list of links.