- Professor said meat should be properly priced to avoid disaster. Why just meat?
- “The Seed Makers Who Don’t Pray for Rain.” Slick, but do they actually pray for drought?
- Found the above here, but is GMO drought resistance really “very important stuff to making farming sustainable”?
- Kenyan farmers grow mushrooms. Fun, guys.
- Does Africa need better product branding?
- Public Aid, Philanthropy, and the Privatization of African Agricultural Development. I confess, I didn’t understand most of it.
- Rhizowen invents the artichon. Who says there’s no new food to be discovered?
- Kew celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Pollinators get a look-in.
- Rome celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Agriculture prominent.
- IUCN celebrates Allium pskemense: edible, medicinal, a crop wild relative, and threatened.
- World record plate of hummus, 10,452 kg of tasty serotonin.
- Local man sends USDA a fig they didn’t have in their genebank.
Industrial vs Organic, seconds out, round 654
Jeremy’s brief post on Prof. Robert Paarlberg’s love note to industrial agriculture in Foreign Policy has generated quite a heated discussion. That’s what we like to see, so do join in if you haven’t done so already. Foreign Policy has also published something of a rebuttal. And, coincidentally (or maybe not — but Paarlberg is not mentioned) so has mongabay.com. Thesis. Antithesis. Still no sign of that pesky synthesis.
LATER: Marion Nestle has also just published something relevant to this somewhat sterile debate, though in response to the “superweed” story in the NY Times that’s been going viral rather than in direct response to Paarlberg.
Nibbles: Sorghum, Microbes, Seeds, Biofortification, Spent grain, Fermentation, Fisheries, Millennium Villages, Cooking fish
- All the cool crops are doing it. Sorghum has a Facebook page. Any others?
- Soil microbes showing “increasing antibiotic resistance“.
- Big, expensive, new Seed Tech Institute for East Africa. I’m suspending judgement. h/t CAS-IP
- New Agriculturalist does the AgroSalud thing: biofortified staples.
- Speaking of which, you can biofortify chapatis with distillers grains. But what will the livestock eat?
- More fermentation goodness.
- Cobia is the new cod.
- Nutrition in the Millennium Villages.
- NW USA seafood recipes have moved up the foodchain in last 100 years, because rarer and more expensive.
Nibbles: Microlivestock, Urban ag, Ag info, School meals in Peru, Agrobiodiversity indicators, Nature special supplement, Extension, Breeding organic, Forgetting fish in China, Deforestation, Russian potatoes, Fijian traditional knowledge, Megaprogrammes
- FAO slideshow on Egyptian rabbits.
- Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development calls for papers on urban agriculture. Will some look at the intersection with art?
- And IAALD re-launches its journal.
- “…students receiving online encouragement from the national soccer star reported going to bed at night looking forward to receiving their iron supplements the following morning.” Great, of course. But why not iron-rich foods?
- Speaking of which, there’s a new FAO publication on “Foods counting for the Nutritional Indicators Biodiversity.” No, I don’t quite understand it myself. Something to do with what foods count towards CBD biodiversity targets. Well, it’s the International Year of Biodiversity, after all.
- Indeed it is. And Nature makes the most of it. See what I did there? No agriculture though, natch.
- Extension gets a forum?
- Biotech can be useful in organic farming? Say it ain’t so!
- More evidence of shifting baselines in people’s perceptions of biodiversity. How quickly they forget.
- Will they forget what forests look like?
- The Vavilov Institute potato collection needs a thorough going over. Taxonomically, that is.
- Making salt in mangrove ponds in Fiji. Nice video. Not agrobiodiversity, but it’s my blog and I like seeing Fiji on it.
- CGIAR abandons agrobiodiversity? Say it ain’t so. Anyone?
- Speaking of megaprogrammes, there’s going to be one on agricultural adaptation to climate change, right?
- “So, how does huitlacoche taste? Does it matter?? LOOK AT IT! I guess it would be fair to say it doesn’t taste as truly horrible as it looks. The flavor is elusive and difficult to describe, but I’ll try: ‘Kinda yucky.'” Don’t believe him! And read the rest.
Ancient lentils come back to life?
Remember the story about the 4000 year old lentil? Well, the latest is that 17 seedlings are going to be planted.