- Rare breed of cattle affected by climate change.
- MoBot to host conference on Global Plant Conservation Strategy, 5-7 July 2011
- Russian wildfires expected to be worse this year. What price wheat?
- GOOD gets its head around the meaning of “grain”. As in “15-grain bread in supermarkets”.
- Sudan Agricultural Research Corporation’s Plant Genetic Resources Programme popped up in my Reader. No idea why.
- Uganda’s farmers discover the value of sunflowers.
Where will the protein come from?
As everyone and her dog ventures an opinion of how much more food will be needed to properly feed how many more mouths by when, it is worth bearing in mind an idea that was a little bit hidden in Oliver Morton’s wonderful introduction to The Anthropocene, in The Economist a couple of weeks ago.
Although nitrogen fixation is not just a gift of life — it has been estimated that 100m people were killed by explosives made with industrially fixed nitrogen in the 20th century’s wars — its net effect has been to allow a huge growth in population. About 40% of the nitrogen in the protein that humans eat today got into that food by way of artificial fertiliser. There would be nowhere near as many people doing all sorts of other things to the planet if humans had not sped the nitrogen cycle up.
There’s a chart, too.
Industrial nitrogen fixation does not, of course, require oil, but it does require lots of cleaner, cheaper energy, and there’s still no sign of that just around the corner.
Nibbles: Wheat disease, Dried vegetables, Gates spending in Africa, Canadian spending in India, Ethiopian wheat
- Wheat disease understood; sequence of leaf blotch fungus.
- Wheat disease conquered? “Super varieties” resistant to UG99 and yield 15% more. What could go wrong?
- Zambian farmers urged to dry vegetables for fun and profit (and better nutrition).
- Gates Foundations has spent US$1.7 billion on agriculture in Africa, so far.
- Swaminathan Foundation scores Canadian support for research on agriculture, poverty and nutrition. h/t PAR.
- Bioversity Seeds for Needs distributes preselected genebank wheat varieties to Ethiopian women farmers to adapt to climate change.
Nibbles: Food security, Food carts, Cotton, Ritual, C4 C3 CC, American Indian diets, Community genebanks in India, Fowler, Dark earth soil, Domestication
- German donor examines food and security, notes “the fast loss of biodiversity”.
- Food carts are successful oases in at least one food “desert”.
- Yesterday’s Botany Photo of the Day was American cotton.
- Good news, everyone: “Hardcore farmers prefer lowkey rituals.” Obviously the memo didn’t reach the children of the corn.
- Photosynthesis and climate change: it’s complicated.
- Native Americans try to reclaim control of their foodways. And their waists.
- “…every district should have a community-controlled seed centre with a gene bank for traditional seeds.” Of course it should. “The local available seed diversity needs to be protected and conserved at any cost.” Of course it must.
- “Right now, all over the world, projects are underway to store seeds…“
- Dark earths not just in Amazon, Africa too.
- Presentation on IFAD project on cultivating wild aromatic etc. species for money in Morocco.
Nibbles: Royal genebank, Fish collection, Plant health, USDA wheat breeding project, Afghanistan, Breadfruit Art, Pests and Diseases, Idaho, Plant breeding, Gates, Panax quinquefolius, Natives
- Thai king has crop genebank on palace grounds.
- Fish in jars.
- Planning Plant Clinics.
- Plant Breeding for Drought Stress: The Project.
- Wait, the Nebraska National Guard has an agribusiness development team? Maybe they should talk to the people responsible for the previous bullet point?
- Kids! (And adults!) An Art Contest to celebrate ‘Ulu. Breadfruit, that is.
- Use of Agrobiodiversity for Pest and Disease Management. A slide show from Carlo Fadda at Bioversity.
- 3rd Annual Biodiversity Working for Farmers Tour in Idaho. 23rd June, you have been warned.
- Huge New York Times story on plant breeding and climate change.
- Bill Gates hails creativity for small farmers challenge.
- American ginseng: use it or lose it.
- Do you live in Ann Arbour? Do you want native plants for your garden? Yeah but how about American ginseng?