- Berry-go-Round 6, a plant-based blog carnival, is up. Jeremy says: “Taxonomy! Yay!“
- US uproots sugarcane, Kenya plants it. “Deciding who is right is difficult.” Er, you betcha.
- California’s largest cash crop can be an environmental disaster.
- Cassava not as nasty as its wild relatives.
Nibbles: Maize squared, Urban Ag, Traditional farming, Rice, Extension, Training, Pine nuts, Beer, Markets
- More on ancient maize. Old popcorn contains interesting DNA diversity.
- How teosinte became maize.
- Urban Harvest has a new web site. Via.
- Khadin cultivation system contributes to sustainability in Rajasthan.
- Vietnamese farmers helping their African brethren grow rice.
- Agricultural development officer delivers training on village-level seed management, then hands out improved seed.
- Former student waxes lyrical about UP Los Baños.
- Pine nuts.
- Brewing medieval and modern juxtaposed.
- Working out fair trade.
Nibbles: Fungi, Cacao, Animal husbandry, China, Africa, Maize, Genebank
- Diverse strains + diverse substrates = diverse shiitake.
- Chocolate is from Mars. Jeremy comments: “A disease called witches”??? BBC Science reporting strikes again. Get the USDA’s version.
- Eldis on a roll this morning: Livestock and climate change in Africa, sustainability of Chinese agriculture, beyond magic bullets in African agriculture.
- EurekAlert! tries to catch up: Mexican landraces.
- Quality assured potato genebank.
Sound news
CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — has a new series on air called Diet for a Hungry Planet: How our World Eats. I’m busy listening to the first programme right now, and while it is pretty corny, it is also very informative. Although the focus is on Canada (and why shouldn’t it be?) the ideas being discussed are applicable everywhere. If nothing else, they’ll provoke discussion, I’m sure. Be warned, though, that if you listen direct from the browser page (as opposed to downloading a podcast version and listening to that), if you navigate away from that page the show will stop and you’ll have to go back to the beginning.
Beer news
In Uganda, the Finance Ministry recently cut the tax on beers made from local ingredients. Nile Breweries responded by dropping the price of its Eagle and Eagle Extra beers, made from local sorghum.
Mr Onapito-Ekomoloit said the company was taking the move in the “interest of strengthening Uganda’s agricultural base through sorghum farmer development.â€
Win-win-win. I’ll drink to that.
Meanwhile, on another continent, a newly-brewed sorghum beer suffers “a pervasive taste of iron. Not like sucking on a rusty nail but its definitely there”.