Looks like the mini-pig frenzy is over and we’re back to normal…
Religion and conservation
Leslie E. Sponsel, a professor of anthropology at Cornell, has an interesting article at Earth Portal ((Sponsel, Leslie (Lead Author); David Casagrande (Topic Editor). 2007. “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.” In: Encyclopedia of Earth. Eds. Cutler J. Cleveland (Washington, D.C.: Environmental Information Coalition, National Council for Science and the Environment). [First published September 22, 2007; Last revised October 18, 2007; Retrieved October 20, 2007].)) on “Sacred places and biodiversity conservation.”
Since the 1990s, sacred places have emerged as a new frontier for interdisciplinary research on their own merits and also for their actual or potential relevance for biodiversity conservation. This reflects the emerging recognition in many sectors of the important role that religion and spirituality can play in environmentalism. In some ways attention to these phenomena is a natural development. Even secular approaches to environmental protection often become a kind of sacralization of a space, such as pursuing wilderness as an ideal. This is exemplified by John Muir (1838-1914), who experienced the forested mountains of the Western United States as a sacred place, and who was especially influential in the creation of the national park system.
Well, we saw something very similar in the previous post, with the “natural agriculture” of the adherents of the Shumei cult in Japan. Pity that Prof. Sponsel doesn’t deal with agricultural biodiversity at all in his article, it would have added an interesting dimension. The “sacralization of a space” doesn’t only apply to wilderness. Think of the certification of organic farms, or the agricultural landscapes inscribed in the list of World Heritage Sites.
Natural agriculture
Orion Magazine has a short article about shizen nouhou, or “natural agriculture,” as practiced by a Japanese spiritual group called Shumei. This was founded by a certain Mokichi Okada, who after living through two world wars decided that agriculture could be one of the ways we can learn how to respect life, and thus heal the world. But a special kind of agriculture, involving no inputs at all, lest the land think we no longer trust it. It sounds crazy, I know, but the story of sophisticated Tokyo urbanites reconnecting with the land is rather affecting.
Teaching kids about fungi
Another thing CWR can do
Nitrification is the oxidation of ammonia to nitrite. It’s an important part of the nitrogen cycle and all that, but bad news for agriculture, because up to 70% of applied N fertilizer can be lost to plants this way. There are synthetic nitrification inhibitors out there (e.g. dicyandiamide), but now comes news that a wild relative of wheat is also pretty good at slowing down the process. Researchers have identified the bits of the genome involved in biological nitrification inhibition in Leymus racemosus, and have managed to get them to do their stuff in wheat too. ((Subbarao, G. et al. (2007) Can biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) genes from perennial Leymus racemosus (Triticeae) combat nitrification in wheat farming? Plant Soil 299:55-64.)) Is there nothing crop wild relatives can’t do?