A UNEP press release about the launch of the “Kenya: Atlas of Our Changing Environment” led me to the website of the global project to which the Kenya publication contributes. It does include agriculture and aquaculture: check out the drop-down menu in the top right-hand corner. You click on the icon on the map and get more information on specific sites, such as Balanta rice farming in Guinea-Bissau, for example. You can download imagery and leave comments about each site.
What the hell is going on in Ivory Coast?
I only ask because on the same day (yesterday), the BBC published a piece entitled “Ivory Coast’s sweet cocoa success” while the Financial Times had “Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry stares hard at a bleak future.” Maybe it’s my gloomy nature, and my plummeting faith in the BBC, but I believe the FT story more.
Invasion of the (edible) killer crabs
Two stories of invasives, one with a silver lining (perhaps), the other not so much.
The Chinese mitten crab has settled in the Thames, causing trouble of varied sorts. Bad. Boffins at the Natural History Museum think it can be harvested and sold in restaurants and special food shops. Good. I look forward to seeing participants at the Henley Royal Regatta dodging around the crab farms.
And from Utah — the Beehive State, ironically — the first sightings of Africanized “killer” bees. As if bees didn’t have enough problems already, what with their colonies collapsing and everything. Never rains but it pours.
LATER: And here’s another invasive you can eat.
LATER STILL: There’s a nice roundup of Colony Collapse Disorder at CABI’s blog.
Blogging the big birthday: Chickens of the world
I’d like to think Darwin might have had this poster, or something like it, in mind as he wrote the following words in the Domestication. But then he would have acknowledged it. He was meticulous about that.
As some naturalists may not be familiar with the chief breeds of the fowl, it will be advisable to give a condensed description of them. From what I have read and seen of specimens brought from several quarters of the world, I believe that most of the chief kinds have been imported into England, but many sub-breeds are probably still here unknown. The following discussion on the origin of the various breeds and on their characteristic differences does not pretend to completeness, but may be of some interest to the naturalist. The classification of the breeds cannot, as far as I can see, be made natural. They differ from each other in different degrees, and do not afford characters in subordination to each other, by which they can be ranked in group under group. They seem all to have diverged by independent and different roads from a single type.
The poultry of the world. Portraits of all known valuable breeds of fowl. Fifty-two types of identified chickens. Chromolithograph by L. Prang & Co., Boston, ca. 1868. From the Performing Arts Poster Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress. [PD] This picture is in the public domain. Downloaded from flickr.
Blogging the big birthday: Darwin the seed networker
Sure: “The Voyage of the Beagle,” “The Origin of the Species,” “The Descent of Man.” But also thousands of letters. Darwin corresponded widely, asking for information and opinions, checking facts. He was very scrupulous in giving credit, just look at the footnotes in his books. But actually the flow was not one-way. Yes, Darwin was a phenomenal networker. He would probably have had a blog.
His passion for networking extended to seed. He carried on a correspondence for some years with a Mr James Torbitt, a spirit merchant of Belfast. Torbitt had the idea that potato late blight might be overcome by using true seed. He wrote a treatise explaining how, and sent it to Members of Parliament and prominent landowners. With each pamphlet was a packet of 9,000 potato seeds. And he put an ad in The Times:
EXTINCTION OF POTATO DISEASE, with doubled or trebled crops – Modus operandi – Grow from seed. Exposure of plants to full force of infection. Destruction of those which succumb. Propagation of the by the sett. (In all places some plants will repel the attack of the parasite: in some, all). Seed supplied Address Robertson, Brooman and Co.; 150 Fleet Street, London. Or James Torbitt, Belfast, Ireland.
Torbitt asked Darwin for advice. Was he doing the right thing? Darwin assured him that he was.
Torbitt’s project illustrated in practice the idea of selection, which was a controversial issue among naturalists from the time of the publication of On the origin of species in 1859, and of the advantages of cross-breeding, hence Darwin’s … interest.
He allowed his name to be used in connection with the initiative, and pledged financial support: “between March 1878 and May 1881, through Darwin’s initiative, Torbitt received £410 from Darwin’s friends and relatives.”
Research on true potato seed continues. Darwin would have approved. And maybe even sent some money.