Berry Go Round No. 8 is up at Not Exactly Rocket Science. This is “the carnival that celebrates the blogosphere’s coverage of all things botanical” and, very gratifyingly, there’s some faintly agricultural stuff there. Some of it we had already noted here, but one we hadn’t. Midoria has an introduction to Quercus serrata, konara in Japanese, an oak that is used as a substrate for shiitake mushrooms. Yum.
Training Opportunity
Via the RMAP blog, news of internships with the International Development Research Centre in Canada. The announcement at the IDRC web site gives all the details, and while some of the topics genuinely have nothing to do with agricultural biodiversity, others could definitely do with an injection of agrobiodiversity. Urban Poverty and Environment, for example, and Rural Poverty and Environment could both incorporate a diversity angle, as could Ecosystem Approaches to Human Health, I suspect.
Closing date is 12 September 2008.
Nibbles: Veal, Anatomy, Taro, Schwenkler, Genebanks
- “You have to find a wacky person when you are trying to rescue something in danger of extinction“.
- Fruit porn video from BBC.
- Hawaii sets up task force to save taro. Yeah that’ll work.
- John Schwenkler potpourri.
- Malaysian PM set right on seedbanks. Thanks, Choo.
Nibbles: Maize, Russia, Maze
- Get ready for cold-tolerant corn.
- Get ready for Russian dominated global food. The numbers are jaw-dropping.
- Get ready to navigate sorghum sudan grass labyrinth.
Putting words in the minister’s mouth
ACCORDING to the Minister for Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives, Mr Stephen Wasira, more than 90 per cent of farmers in the country use recycled seeds, which invariably have very low production.
I wonder where he got the idea that farm-saved seed is “invariably” low yielding?
Mr Wasira said this last week, when he was opening a workshop on the seed industry development in Tanzania.
‘Nuff said.
Read the whole report in Daily News Online.