- Compare and contrast the banana and the Big Mac. Dan Koeppel takes it to the masses.
- Lamenting the loss of “amber waves of grain”. Ingrate.
- Cameroon’s agriculture vulnerable to climate change. I’ll alert the media.
- Look what I got you for National Pollinator Week next week; a World Checklist of Bees. Neat-o.
- Celebrate food and farmers in Eden.
- “The core of the strategy is a short-term provision of improved seeds suited to the local environment and fertilizers like Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and urea accompanied by advice on how to use them.” Sounds familiar…
- Meanwhile, in non-Millennium Villages: “While his maize cobs were smaller than others, the seed was of a much higher quality; the fibre of his cotton was also much longer.”
- Japanese yam fields in peril. Yams as in Dioscorea or sweet potato or what? So annoying.
- Neolithic myths?
- California apricot grower explores Central Asia, comes up trumps. Jeremy comments: CandyCots? I think I want to be sick.
Nibbles: Migration, Micronutrients, Taste, Kava, News, Data, Ozone, Chillis
- Rats to New Zealand.
- 300 grand grant to develop an iron bullet.
- Yummie, that tomato tastes very umami!
- “When they call their toxic products ‘kava’, they are misusing the word.”
- Subscribe to the Semilla Besada newsletter.
- Gates Foundation helps FAO improve African agricultural statistics. About time someone did.
- How to conserve rare plants.
- As if climate change is not bad enough, there’s also ozone to worry about. Thankfully, Michigan is on it.
- Boffin uses nanotubes to measure chilli hotness. Useful because some don’t like it hot.
Nibbles: Taste, Guano, Breeding squared, Satellites, Subsidies, Harakeke, Pomegranate
- Who put pepper in my shiraz? Human diversity meets grape diversity meets pepper diversity.
- High-priced fertilizers bring guano back. No shit. Via.
- Rebsie breeds a unique red-podded pea. Gregor repeats, “You go girl.”
- Another backyard breeder bares all. Mass crosses, mass selection.
- Eye in the sky informs on crop performance. No comment (yet) from Larry and Sergei.
- Understanding the US Farm Bill. Questions?
- Things to do with Phormium tenax.
- Popular as a pomegranate? Via.
Nibbles: Potato, Myanmar, Coffee, Vetch, Rotations
- Spud War-of-words hots up.
- Meanwhile, in the real world, Irrawaddy delta farmers head back to their seawater-covered fields. Thank goodness for all those salinity-tolerant rice varieties, eh?
- Partake of the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.
- Hairy boffin breeds hairy vetch.
- Complex rotations better for yields. Diversity is good in time as well as space!
Breeding clubs
As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.