Farming and tourism

You may remember my recent post from Lima bemoaning the lost opportunity of linking agrobiodiversity education with tours of an archaeological site. Here’s an example of such an opportunity emphatically grasped. An historic farmhouse in Rhode Island is offering “visitors, particularly children, a glimpse into the lost world of small-scale farming in New England, when the distance between the chicken coop and the dinner plate was much shorter.” And that includes heirloom varieties, for example of tomatoes, of which the staff grow 30. They also keep some local ((Later: Ok, Jeremy, how about “locally important”?)) livestock breeds, including Red Devon cattle, famous for pulling settlers’ wagon trains West.

“One of the things we’ve worked on since we’ve been here is constantly trying to cultivate in people’s minds and hearts a preservation ethic, not just about preserving an old house,” he said, “but preserving landscapes.”

Breeding clubs

As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.

Molasses in January

There really is no length to which we will not go to bring you all the agrobiodiversity news that’s fit to print. Case in point coming up. Jeremy gets a heads-up from his Google Alert on sorghum. It’s from an unlikely — even suspicious — source, but he dutifully clicks on the link and is rewarded with a reference to the “Sorghum Molasses Purity Act of 1837.” He dismisses it as a joke, but also shares the link with me, knowing I’m in need of a laugh after a heavy week wrestling with a recalcitrant donor report. Being of a more trusting disposition, and never having run across error, humour or misinformation on the internet, I quickly google, fully expecting to hit a learned wikipedia article on the said piece of legislation, surely a notorious example of anti-diversity agricultural protectionism of the most egregious kind.

Right. No such thing, of course. Google knows nothing of any Sorghum Molasses Purity Acts, of 1837 or any other date. But my efforts on your behalf are most emphatically not totally wasted. For now I — and you — know about the

Great Boston Molasses Flood of January 1919 when a molasses storage tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company burst, sending a two-story-high wave of molasses through the streets of the North End of Boston.

And who wouldn’t give up a slice of lunchtime to be able to quote such a fact?

Oh, and by the way. There may not have been a Sorghum Molasses Purity Act of 1837, but there was a Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733, which seems to be an example of agricultural protectionism of the most egregious kind.

They shoot horses, don’t they?

Ok, that’s just a provocative way of introducing an interesting review in Trends in Ecology and Evolution describing how harvesting from animal populations can affect their genetic make-up. ((Fred W. Allendorf, Phillip R. England, Gordon Luikart, Peter A. Ritchie, Nils Ryman (2008) Genetic effects of harvest on wild animal populations. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Volume 23(6):327-337.)) The following three types of genetic change are highlighted:

  1. strengthening or collapse of population structure
  2. genetic erosion
  3. selection

The take-home message is that management plans should recognize that harvesting changes not just the demography but also the genetics of populations. Very important for sustainable management of fisheries etc., but I bring it up here because it got me thinking: are any wild relatives of livestock exploited through harvesting? Things like these cute pigs, for example. And would the conclusions be very different for plants?