Author: Jeremy Cherfas

Posted on

Replanting the Land of Milk and Honey

There’s a 250 hectare park between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in Israel that aims to recreate some of the agricultural landscapes of the Old Testament, pairing living exhibits with the appropriate texts. Started 35 years ago, Neot Kedumim features plants, animals and agricultural processes — olive presses, threshing floors — dating back 2000 years and more.

That’s very interesting, I imagine, but I can’t help thinking that what the region really needs is a “Cradle of (western) Agriculture” Museum. Attractions like the Potato Park in Peru give tourists a different taste of history, often literally. And they can raise more general awareness of the importance of agricultural biodiversity. I know I’m dreaming, but it would be nice to see the countries of the Middle East settle their differences for long enough to build such a museum, even deliberately located in three or four different countries.

Agro-tourism in general seems to be becoming more popular; maybe we should compile a global list of places where people can see local culture and the foods it produces? Send us your suggestions.

By the way, I was alerted to Neot Kedumim by this article, but don’t bother going there. It seems to be a blatant rip-off of this much longer and more interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post.

Posted on

The First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition

I was pretty blown away by a student video on biodiversity that I first saw at Evolving Thoughts, a science blog. It is a really classy little film, one I would have been proud to have made myself, a rapid romp through the entire subject of biodiversity and why it matters. But — you knew there was going to be a but — the entire thing devoted about half a sentence to agricultural biodiversity, and even then it was a throwaway line about food coming “from nature”.

Well, that just won’t do. So Luigi and I had a quick conversation and decided to launch the First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition: make a better movie (which we will interpret very liberally — animation, Ken Burns-style stills, whatever) and focus on agricultural biodiversity. Perhaps there should be a second category for posters?

We haven’t yet decided on a prize (how about an iPod nano?) or the detailed rules or the closing date or how to enter or how the winner will be decided. But we’re announcing it now so that people have a chance to prepare their entries. Maybe it should run for a year? Help us, please, by sending us your comments on this hare-brained scheme and also making it known to anyone and everyone who might be interested.

The Rules are here. If you don’t like them, tell us why.

Posted on

A new route for pigs and people across the Pacific

The standard story of Pacific colonization is that people and their crops and livestock spread across it in a generally southwestern direction. Scientists from Durham University and the University of Oxford are renavigating the details. They looked at DNA from various pigs across the Pacific, and conclude that their journey may have started in what is now Vietnam. It has always been assumed that the people and their agriculture traveled together as a single package. This research indicates that different parts of the package took different routes.

There’s more detail at a Durham web site about pig domestication, but the actual paper does not seem to be available online yet. Here’s the press release announcing it.

Posted on

Is this good news for bees?

“I’m not convinced that it’s so much worse than what we saw in 2004 and 2005,” said Eric Mussen, a bee specialist with the University of California, Davis.

While bees are undoubtedly in trouble this year, Mussen said, there’s little evidence so far that it’s anything other than the continuation of their long struggle with disease, environmental stress and the hardship of being hauled cross-country in midwinter to pollinate crops in California.

“This time the media just became much more involved in it,” he said.

That’s from an article by Jim Downing in the Sacramento Bee. (I kid you not; it is actually a very good paper, although you may need to register and log in to see the full story, which is why I am quoting from it at some length.) Mussen is just one of the experts who says that the fuss this year about vanishing bees reflects more media interest rather than fewer bees.

“About all we’ve got is anecdotes,” said, Troy Fore, executive director of the American Beekeeping Federation.

There is, in fact, no central agency responsible for monitoring the status of honeybees in the US. News comes by word of mouth, and while some beekeepers are playing down the crisis, hoping that farmers don’t question the pollinating ability of the hives they’ve rented, others are blowing up the problem in a bid for government support.

Years ago, Mussen said, many Central Valley counties employed a bee inspector to check the health of rented hives. That person helped resolve disputes between beekeepers and farmers and served as an informal census-taker.

Today, those inspectors are scarce. One of the few remaining is Clifton Piper, who has checked hives for the Merced County Department of Agriculture since 1973. He isn’t sure about the big picture, either.

“It’s difficult to see just how short the shortage is,” he said. Beekeepers often bolster weak hives with imported packages of bees from Australia, he said. And in cold and rainy weather, it’s hard to tell whether sluggish bees in a hive are sick or simply chilly.

I suppose time, and the price of almonds, will tell.

Posted on

Broadening the genetic base of cucumbers

An American cucumber breeder, Jack Staub, is collaborating with Chinese scientists to bring fresh DNA into the modern cucumber. The hope is that this will give new cucumber varieties the genetic breadth to withstand droughts and diseases. The story started 12 years ago, when Staub crossed domestic cucumbers with a newly-discovered wild Chinese variety. It wasn’t easy to get the results of the cross to grow, but now the hybrids are being evaluated to see what they might contribute to domestic cucumbers. The next step, says Staub, is to cross the cucumber with wild melons, which are closely related and which might also be able to donate valuable traits to the crop.

The story is just one of several about vegetable breeding in the latest USDA magazine.