Yes, but “quality of life in a developed economy does.” I got the quote via a post at LEISA’s Farm which makes the point that most information on the recent bee die-off has come from the USA and Europe. If you know of similar observations from other part of the world, let them know (leisasfarm at gmail.com).
Submergence resistant rice on the airwaves
“It was not in use,” said Pamela Ronald. “Very, very low yield and very poor flavor, so no one was eating it. It’s really more like a grassy weed, but it had these properties.”
“It” is a rice from eastern India which was known ((By farmers, the article says. But then Dr Ronald says it was not in use. Was it information recorded by a conscientious germplasm collector?)) to survive under water. Listen on VOA to how Pamela Roland identified the sub gene in this variety and then introduced it into the popular Swarna.
“We wanted to hear what kind of difference it made to their families, and a couple of the women told me that they were able to feed their families and they had extra rice to sell, which is really important in those areas to bring in a little cash,” said Pamela Ronald.
Rice vs millet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmHUsVlc8yY
We’ve mentioned before the efforts to support millet cultivation among the Hill Tribes of India. There’s even a BBC documentary about the work. The above video is not from the Kolli Hills, but the problem it illustrates is the same. Rice subsidies and mining are threatening the way of life of the Dongria Kondh.
Living Farms works with them to ensure availability of food for the entire year. This is being done by re-establishing their traditional farming system, by conserving the biodiversity of millet and uncultivated food.
Featured: Cattle in the Sahara
Mathilda corrects Luigi on cattle domestication:
“Mathilda goes on to hypothesize that cattle domestication may have started in the Sahara — before the growing of crops…”
Not really…
I point out that domesticated cattle only start appearing in Africa along with the Neolithic expansion from Asia and match the expansion of the Asian domesticates (other posts). The cattle at Nabta were probably captured and ‘kept’ from wild and not domesticated, like the Barbary sheep at Afada. Possibly to secure food for hard times or to make sure they had a cow to sacrifice on ritual days. There’s no evidence from the African languages or expansion patterns of morphologically domesticated cattle bones that cattle were ever domesticated in the Sahara until the concept had arrived from Asia.
Land sharing or sparing?
That is one of the questions addressed by a paper in Journal of Applied Ecology which looks at the ecogeographic distribution of organic farming in the UK. “Land sparing” means excluding land from intensive agriculture to protect biodiversity. “Land sharing” is a contrasting strategy which would make all agricultural land better for biodiversity. The study recommends
…continuing to use intensive agriculture to meet our food production targets, but using organic farms in suitable areas to provide islands of biodiversity, as well as a smaller amount of food.
So the vote is for land sparing. Ok, fair enough. What gets me, though, is that, as usual, it is only the effect of agriculture on the surrounding wild biodiversity that is being considered. What about the biodiversity that is an integral part of the agricultural system itself? Doesn’t agrobiodiversity count for something in all this?