Idaho’s Treasure Valley Farmer-Chef Collaborative sounds like a really cool idea. It brings producers — including producers of some fairly unusual things for Idaho — together with the area’s top restaurateurs. The former get a lucrative market, the latter some interesting new ingredients with which to attract customers. Everybody wins. And speaking of interesting new ingredients, how about goat meat? Apparently, New Yorkers have just discovered it. Fuggedaboutit.
Mercato di coltivatori
Interesting to see the term “farmer’s market” — in English — being used in Italy, and not particularly for the benefit of tourists. Not sure how long it’s been in currency. I guess the concept has been around for a while.
Nibbles: Student, Sea cucumbers, Reindeer, Climate change, Urban beeking, Taro diseases, Markets, Apples
- Adam Forbes updates us on his travels in Ethiopia and Peru in search of seeds. Check out his pix too.
- “…sea cucumber populations across the globe, from Asia to the Galapagos, are increasingly in trouble.” Oh dear.
- Satellites help reindeer herders by looking for snow melt. Sounds very cost-effective.
- IFPRI says agriculture will be “dramatically” affected by climate change. Oh dear.
- Keeping bees in cities.
- All you ever wanted to know about taro diseases. With pic goodness! Via.
- Walking London’s markets.
- Navarre: “276 varieties of autochthonous apple tree have been described.”
Musa musings
Plantains are versatile, nutritionally very important in various parts of the world, and often delicious. But they tend to get a bad press, because what’s the point of a banana — well, any fruit, really — that’s not sweet, right? Here’s a case in point: travel editor goes to Dominican Republic and disses national dish. Pass the patacones!
Zoos in trouble
The financial mess is wreaking havoc with the funding of zoos in the US. Conservation of globally important fauna, you say?
When you’re the mayor of Philadelphia or governor of New York or Minnesota House minority leader, and you’re trying to keep libraries open and children insured and state troopers paid, the preservation of, say, South African’s Humboldt penguin can seem a little less pressing.
Entertainment and education?
…the first is a no-brainer for financial paring, and the second has already been pruned through the elimination of after-school programs and cuts to state college budgets, among others. In this way, the multiple purposes of zoos — a trifecta once highly valued — have today made the institutions a target on government balance sheets.
Are botanical gardens in the same boat? And are genebanks next?