- Climate change threatens tropical insects and their pollination services.
- Brazil rises in world genebank rankings.
- Food price crisis advice summarized.
- Cuba “sustainable” agriculture at crossroads.
- Supermarkets bad for small farmers?
Adding value to Peruvian agricultural biodiversity
I hadn’t known about lucuma yogurt (or yoghurt) before seeing this in Lima. Wikipedia says it’s a popular ice cream flavour. I haven’t tried that, but the yogurt is great.
And speaking of added-value products of agrobiodiversity, how about this: potato chips (or crisps) from a whole range of different weird Peruvian high-altitude varieties:
Maize in Africa
An article in the latest Economist discusses the Malawi fertilizer subsidy programme. There’s been a fair amount in the media about this lately, and in particular about whether the bumper maize harvests of the past couple of years can be attributed to the extra fertilizer 1 now finding its way onto farmers’ fields increasingly sown to modern varieties, or just to better rains. I think the jury is still out on that one, but check out this statement from the piece in The Economist:
…local seed varieties, little altered from those first brought by the Portuguese centuries ago…
I don’t know about you, but I think that rather underestimates the power of natural selection, drift and recombination. Not to mention 500 growing seasons’ worth of painstaking selection by twenty generations of African farmers.
Nibbles: Camels, kvas, fruits, watermelon, bees, soil microbes
- Camels make a comeback in Rajasthan.
- Globalization comes to Russian kvas production.
- Mangosteen finally allowed into US. NY Times video about exotic fruits. Via.
- While the rest of the world frets about high food prices, US declares National Watermelon Month.
- USDA tries to keep abreast of honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder.
- Teaching about soil microbial agrobiodiversity.
To all our Mexican readers
!Feliz Cinco de Mayo! You’ll be pleased to hear the California Avocado Commission is thinking of you too.