- “USDA’s Bourlaug International Science Fellows Program has partnered with non-profit and for-profit organizations to identify new agricultural techniques for cocoa cultivation and to control cocoa diseases.” And do some conservation and breeding, surely.
- Big shots call for a decent global digital soil map. Seconded.
- Cool photos of rice agricultural landscapes.
- Roasting maize, Mexico style. Oh yeah, there’s also a nifty new maize mapping population out.
- Peruvian apple cactus doing just fine in Israel.
Farmer takes a shot at agri-intellectuals
Blake Hurst is a farmer in Missouri, and something of an anti-Pollan:
…we have to farm “industrially” to feed the world, and by using those “industrial” tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.
The argument is made very engagingly, with hard numbers as well as telling anecdotes, and a real passion for farming:
Young turkeys aren’t smart enough to come in out of the rain, and will stand outside in a downpour, with beaks open and eyes skyward, until they drown.
But sadly, as ever, the debate is framed as either/or, black or white, organic or industrial, no grey allowed, no nuance:
I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.
And yet Mr Hurst admits to some organic-like practices, such as rotations and the use of manure, on his unashamedly “industrial” family farm. I can’t help thinking, not for the first time, what a step forward it would be if we tried not to think in mutually exclusive dichotomies all the time. Anyway, read the whole thing at The American.
LATER: USDA explores the unexplored potential of biotech crops in an organic setting. Talk about shades of grey.
Rice diversity measured and photographed
I did a quick nibble a few days ago about the OryzaSNP project, in which “[a]n international team of investigators used microarray-based resequencing to look for SNPs in 100 million bases of non-repetitive DNA in the genomes of 20 different rice varieties and landraces.”
They’ve come up with 159,879 single nucleotide polymorphisms, a “gold-standard set of curated polymorphisms” for rice.
As for the 20 varieties used…
“[t]hese varieties, the OryzaSNPset collection, are genetically diverse and actively used in international breeding programs because of their wide range of agronomic attributes,” the authors explained.
But what do they look like? Well, I just found this photograph of their seeds on IRRI’s Flickr page. A nice idea.
Making changes
Changemakers is a community of action where we all collaborate on solutions. We know we have the power to solve the world’s most pressing social problems. We’re already doing it, one project, one idea at a time.
How do we do it? We talk about the issues, share stories and mentor, advise, and encourage each other in group forums, even engage in friendly competition. We form surprising connections and unexpected partnerships across the globe that turn the old ways of problem solving upside down. We try things that have never been tried before.
With regard to the competitions, the winners of the one entitled “Cultivating Innovation: Solutions for Rural Communities,” which “aims to find innovative solutions toward improving the quality of life in rural and farming communities,” were announced a few days ago. Alas, none of the three winners, worthy as they undoubtedly are, has an explicit agrobiodiversity focus. But I may be wrong, the descriptions of the projects are rather brief. The entry from the Uganda Rural Development and Training Programme, for example, mentions seed saving.
The latest competition is all about GMOs: “How can we help consumers make better, more informed choices?” You can join the debate, or submit an entry, here. The winner will get a chance to chat with the best-selling author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan. There are six weeks left to enter. If you have a new, innovative way to “help consumers become more aware of what they are eating, and discover how their choices will affect health, the environment and society,” have a go!
A Svalbard for animals in the making?
I had somehow missed news earlier this year of a failed (just) attempt to clone the Pyrenean ibex. That’s an extinct subspecies of the Spanish ibex, Capra pyrenaica. I was belatedly alerted to it by a piece in LiveScience about “a new project to store tiny samples of tissue from endangered animals at New York’s natural history museum.”
With room for up to 1 million specimens, the AMNH’s frozen tissue lab currently stores frozen butterflies, frog toes, whale skin and alligator hides, among many other samples, in nitrogen-cooled vats. The collection is used today for conservation research — the genetic information gives clues to the breadth of the animals’ hunting grounds and breeding behaviors. In an agreement signed this month with the National Park Service, the museum will begin storing tissue samples of endangered animals living in the nation’s parks. The first samples — blood from a Channel Islands fox — should be delivered in August, museum officials said.
Maybe they should also include the caribou, “a species historically considered so numerous — and so distant from human activity — that most assumed it was beyond human ability to affect it.” But is perhaps in trouble now. Room for 1 million specimens might not be enough.