India’s Financial Express has a piece describing some of the recent history of Basmati rice. I guess it’s a fairly familiar story, but a couple of things stood out for me as I read it. One was that India and Pakistan “are planning to jointly claim rights for geographical indications (GIs) for this aromatic long grain rice.” Another was that the “European Union … is in favour of duty derogation for import of Basmati having pure parental lines.” So not landraces, just newly bred Basmati varieties? Finally, I found the link between Basmati and organic agriculture intriguing.
Ugandan farmers call home
VOA News has a great article (and some audio as well) describing how a Dutch NGO is helping Ugandan farmers exchange agricultural information using mobile phones. If any of the farmers involved has a problem with their cassava, say, or wants to take up a new crop or variety, or get the best price for their honey, the information they need is often just a phone call or sms away. Farmers have great traditional systems for sharing information, but they are often overlooked or at any rate undervalued by development workers. This approach would seem to be a great way of valuing, strengthening and allowing farmers to build on those systems.
The roots of Darfur
The world is waking up to the fact that competition for an eroding natural resources base is at least a contributing factors to the tensions of Darfur, whose tragic results then further exacerbate the problem in vicious positive feedback. But Jonathan Robinson said so some years back (via ADE). What took so long?
Identifying wheat proteins
There’s a new, better method for characterizing the proteins in wheat.
When’s lunch?
The Food Timeline.