- ILRI continues its attempt to take over the internet.
- Dorian Fuller summarizes rice in Madagascar in a paragraph. Good trick. And for his next one he rounds up the latest on bananas. The guy’s a machine.
- No adaptation without agrobiodiversity, rapt masses told. And here, like manna from heaven, is an example. Well, sort of.
- Bruegel on agriculture. With picture goodness.
Nibbles: Land lease, Maasai flexibility, Small farms, Coffee, coffee, coffee, Climate change, Sahelian trees, Food as drugs, Field genebanks, Chinese medicinals, Bolivian NTFP, Invasives
- Dinka men despise manual labour, hence “southern Sudan might soon be on the block for having a lot of its potential farm land leased to, and worked by, foreigners”.
- Maasai, on the other hand, “diversifying into cropping, by keeping fewer and faster growing animals and … taking on paying jobs”. Takes all sorts.
- What is a small farm? Depends.
- Coffee contains insecticides. Who knew?
- Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative (GCQRI) launched.
- Central America’s coffee lands to shrink under climate change, Reuters reports. Enough! I’ve got the shakes.
- Africa, meanwhile, needs technological innovations to cope.
- Domesticating baobab. You know it makes sense.
- Take two snacks in the morning and call me if you don’t feel any better.
- Climate change will affect Portuguese ex situ plant conservation sites too.
- “How best can communities conserve their medicinal plants?” A case study from China.
- Bolivia could make more of its Araceae and Bromeliaceae. Couldn’t we all?
- Are protected areas in Africa harbouring crop wild relatives? Just kidding: it’s invasives IUCN is talking about.
Birds not so smart after all?
Hold the phone! A press release informs us that over two winters, using two different varieties of wheat, garden birds and lab canaries preferred conventional over organic grain. And the reason seems to be that the conventional grain contained 10% more protein. Very smart! But before word goes out to the birds of the world, consider what else the press release says:
This study is only looking at one aspect of the organic food debate – it does not take into account the long-term health implications of using chemical fertilizers and pesticides, or the often negative environmental impact of conventional farming; for example, other work has shown that pesticides can strongly reduce availability of seeds for birds. But it does raise questions about the nutritional benefits of organic food and what consumers are being led to believe.
Because consumers in the UK are choosing organic for its higher protein levels? Because they’re short of protein? More to the point, has anyone asked the birds to consider the long-term consequences of their choices, like the reduced availability of seeds, or nesting spots, or insects for their insectivorous feathered friends?
And, let’s not forget, increased levels of carbon dioxide are reducing protein levels in wheat. Another good reason to grow conventionally, whatever that means.
“Gary says: [A]ll you will get from political advocates is disinformation and misinformation intended to advance their agenda.”
Nibbles: Sorghum and rice and climate change, Pacific agrobiodiversity today and yesterday, Japanese microbiota, Wolf domestication, Organic and fungi, Crop wild relatives, Bees, Hunger, Silk
- Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
- Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
- More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
- More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
- Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
- Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
- Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
- Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
- Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
- Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?
Diversity and adversity in Yunnan, China
It can be a bit frustrating banging on about the importance of agricultural biodiversity when almost everybody else seems to be focused on simplistic solutions to complex problems. Frustrating, and tiring. So I’ll just point you to two items you can read for yourself and decide whether we are truly nuts. First, Nature’s report from Yunnan in China about the drought there. Secondly, a paper by Professor Yy Zhu and his colleagues, Crop Diversity for Yield Increase. Anyone should be able to join the dots.