Do you have an idea which “has high promise of improving rural development, improving nutrition, improving access to clean water, or having a significant impact on water management”? You do? It better involve the use of agrobiodiversity. Anyway, Nestlé would like to hear from you.
Anthropologists and geneticists see the origin of agriculture in different ways
Dorian Fuller has answered Paul Gepts’ comment on Dorian’s post at The Archaeobotanist on the multiple origin of agriculture, which I originally blogged about a few days ago. Let’s remind ourselves of the argument.
This was Dorian’s parting statement on the original post:
…agriculture, like modern human behaviour, was not a one time great invention, but the product of social and environmental circumstances to which human groups with the same cognitive potential responded in parallel ways.
Paul Gepts countered with this:
As a geneticist, I am somewhat surprised that the issue of parallel inventions of agriculture is still an issue… biochemical and molecular data also show distinct, and likely, independent domestication in different geographical areas, not among only among different crops, but also within a crop gene pool.
And now Dorian again:
My sense is that most of the genetics community has shifted towards seeing multiple areas of independent origin, but within archaeology there is still a penchant for reducing historical complexities to as few origins as possible — often focusing on where more archaeological research has taken place rather than considering other forms of evidence (biogeography, genetics) that should encourage us to take up research in the less-explored or unexplored areas.
Read the full exchange.
The latest on the results of the Egyptian pig cull
The BBC has done a follow-up to the story of the Egyptian pig cull. It’s been a disaster for many. Here’s one of the rubbish collectors — zabaleen — who were Cairo’s pig keepers:
I sold pigs twice a year. To pay for mending the car and the school fees for our three young children. There is no way I can replace that income.
There have also been health consequences, especially for children, and some people blame a rat infestation on the accumulating garbage that used to be fed to the pigs.
The government says farmers can restock – but only if the pigs are reared in a more modern farming environment on the outskirts of the city: where pigs are kept in isolation, where they can be slaughtered in a proper way and the meat cooled ready for market.
But the zabaleen say they cannot afford that.
Nibbles: Urban bees, Borlaug, Cotton, Income, Mammals, Human disease, Caribou, Chestnut, IRRI
- There are 227 bee species in New York City. Damn! But not enough known about the work they (and other pollinators) do in natural ecosystems, alas.
- Borlaug home to be National Historic Site?
- Archaeobotanist tackles Old World cotton.
- FAO suggests ways that small farmers can earn more. Various agrobiodiversity options.
- About 400 new mammal species discovered since 1993 (not 2005 as in the NY Times piece). Almost a 10% increase. Incredible. Who knew.
- But how many of them will give you nasty diseases?
- The caribou wont, I don’t think. And by the way, its recent decline is cyclical, so chill.
- Saving the American chestnut through sex. Via the new NWFP Digest.
- “The best thing IRRI can do for rice is to close down and give the seeds it has collected back to the farmers.” Yikes, easy, tiger! Via.
Calling Mythbusters!
So, drowning turkey chicks: is it a rural myth? Have your say.