Today’s the big day for agriculture in Copenhagen. A lot is riding on it, because there hasn’t been much sign of interest at UNFCCC COP15 up to now in the subject of how agriculture is going to adapt to climate change. You can follow Cary Fowler’s Notes from Copenhagen on Facebook.
Nibbles: Hunger, Stereotypes
- Farm workers most food insecure. For shame.
- Forget the stereotype of the ignorant Farmer John, riding on a tractor spewing black fumes and chewing on a piece of straw. Whose stereotype would that be?
Nibbles: CWR protected, Aquaculture, Super potato, Maize domestication, Climate in Africa, Zimbabwe, Pepper, Chinese genebank
- Indian tiger park protects crop wild relatives and other useful plants. h/t Danny.
- CAPRi News highlights a book about Asian Aquaculture Successes.
- Precision breeding creates super potato. Yeah, if you want an industrial feedstock, not food.
- Maize moved from hand to hand, not with moving farmers. And that means … ?
- An African view of climate change. Complex.
- Zimbabwe’s advice on climate change: “Plant more sorghum, less maize“. Simple.
- Survival farming in Zimbabwe. Hard.
- Small farmers growing Piper pepper in Vietnam
- China has set up its first national seed bank as part of the country’s efforts to protect biodiversity. I’ve been there, says Jeremy, and it is stunning.
Nibbles: Climate change, Blog, Language, Language Again, IT,
- Indigenous people take video evidence to Copenhagen. The big site. (Cool map.)
- Congratulations to Biofortified, winners of an interview with foodie god Michael Pollan (and $1500).
- What colour is a banana? Linguist understands diversity, everyone else fails.
- And an orange?
- Google rescued my potato harvest. Long, dull article about a short, sharp story.
Building on coconut
The World Bank’s Development Marketplace 2009 is continuing to feature stories from the winners on its web site. And that’s good because we can scan them as they come up and draw attention to those that involve agricultural biodiversity. Today’s pick, a project from Samoa to build traditional houses “as models of ‘safer, accessible, resilient, and sustainable housing'”.
What’s particularly nice about this is the idea that traditional Samoan houses depend absolutely on agricultural products like the coconut fibre rope that people use to lash the components together. Modern houses built from steel reinforced concrete and corrugated metal cannot withstand cyclones, and their materials become deadly flying objects during storms. Hence the “innovation” of rediscovering traditional methods and material. Might help conserve coconut diversity too, I suppose.
Oh, and in case you were wondering about more obvious, though no less traditional, things to do with coconuts, why not download Coconut Recipes, from Bioversity International and COGENT?