Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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A joke (that features agricultural biodiversity)

A guy from the city is taking a Sunday drive in the country. As he passes an orchard, he sees a farmer standing under an apple tree near the road, holding up a small pig who is eating apples off the tree. Amazed, he pulls over, gets out, and asks the farmer what in the world he’s doing.

The farmer says “Well, Petunia here can’t reach the apples by herself, so I’m giving her a little help.”

The city slicker can’t believe what he’s hearing. “Isn’t that an amazing waste of time?”

The farmer responds, puzzled: “What’s time to a pig?”

With appreciative thanks to Language Log.

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Oekologie 10 is up

The latest issue of Oekologie, a blog carnival, is up at Laelaps. 1 Some choice gems there in our line of work. 21st Century Citizen has a list of “six classic books on organic growing” that is (seeks delicate word) idiosyncratic. There are a couple in there that I would definitely agree with. A couple that I personally would ditch in favour of others. And a couple that I haven’t read. But hey! It’s her list. Maybe some day I’ll do my own. Then there’s a good post from Living the Scientific Life about a research paper suggesting that African farmers use African bees to manage African elephants. The idea is full of holes, as the authors 2 are the first to admit, but nevertheless an interesting approach to a difficult problem.

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Time flies when you’re having fun

Cake Has it really been a year? I suppose it has. Anyway, I’ve taken the opportunity to do a little housekeeping, upgrading to a new version of WordPress. Problem is, the real job calls and there are a couple of things I still need to sort out, like instructions for subscribing and getting rid of that goofy popularity rating thing.

We’re not going to overdo the celebrations here, but you could take the opportunity to sling us a few comments. What do you like? What do you hate? What would you like us to do that we don’t?

Flickr photograph by princessrica.

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Thank you for growing tobacco

Luigi’s post on the perils of tobacco farming prompted a couple of thoughts. One is the old stuff about the ancient drugs being socially acceptable only because they have been around and in use by the ruling western hegemony for a long time. If anyone tried to introduce booze and cigarettes today they wouldn’t stand a chance. The other is that for the sake of consistency we really ought to advocate small-scale tobacco farming in Kentucky as vociferously as we advocate poppy growing in Afghanistan.

Continue reading “Thank you for growing tobacco”