BBC photo essay on Thai insect-based street food.
Swiss clock up ecosystem services
A paper in the latest Journal of Applied Ecology demonstrates that biodiversity provides valuable ecosystem services — though, pace the previous post, it deals with just one of these services. Swiss researchers looked at the effect of “ecological compensation areas” (ECA), meadows managed in such a way as to maintain high levels of biodiversity, on nearby fields which were managed more intensively. In particular, they focused on the effect on pollinators. They concluded that pollinators will be more diverse and effective in intensively managed farmland — thus providing a better service — when there is a botanically diverse ECA close by.
Cassava genes flow
Cassava exchanges precious bodily fluids with wild relative in French Guiana.
ni-Vanuatu get traditional
I don’t know how I missed it. Having just finished a longish stint in the South Pacific, I still try to keep up with what’s going on down there, but the fact that 2007 is the “Year of the Traditional Economy” in Vanuatu totally slipped through my net. ni-Vanuatu are wonderful, friendly people and this sounds like it’s going to be fun. I’m sorry I’m not there (or nearby at any rate) any more, I would probably have tried to link up with some of the planned activities, as agricultural biodiversity seems to be very much on the agenda. Here’s one of the things that people are being encouraged to do, for example:
Each family and community to feed more pigs and chickens, plant more and/or larger gardens, plant more yams and taro, plant more fruit and nut bearing trees, plant more trees for making canoes and tamtams, plant more pandanas trees and plant more of other traditional foods and resources not listed here.
New (urban) Agriculturist
New New Agriculturist out: urban agriculture in spotlight.