Climate change

May 11, 2009

Kesar magoes on the ropes in Gujarat

Farmers in Gujarat are cutting down their mangoes because they no longer yield enough.

Kanu Korat, a farmer of Mandola village in Talala, earlier grew Kesar mango trees on 3.5 hectares of land; but he had to hew them owing to the crop failure. A change of weather conditions in recent times ruined the crop in the region, with mango production falling by 75 per cent. As a result, the farmers here have not been able to quote the normal price of mangoes.

That’s a pity, because Indian mangoes have only recently been allowed back into the US market. I don’t know anything about mango diversity, but the Kesar variety seems popular and fairly common (over 8,000 Google hits), so I don’t suppose it will be endangered by the cull. But still. The shape of things to come? Is this climate change in action?

May 7, 2009May 7, 2009

Nibbles: Invasives, Climate change^2, Bananas, Fibres

Songs raise awareness about aquatic invasive species. Jeremy says: Kill me now.
Long, long post about climate change in Africa. Part 2 “coming soon”.
Yemen prepares for climate change. Need a “strategy for the promotion of rain-fed agriculture”.
Bananas from Iceland … Jeremy says: I don’t get it.
New Agriculturist focuses on natural fibres.

April 22, 2009April 22, 2009

Nibbles: Japan, Bananas, GMO, Bees, Squirrels, Mangroves, Climate change and indigenous people, Goji, Svalbard, Heirloom rice, Dataporn

Japan’s unemployed end up farming.
Somewhat uninformed comments about the perfection of the banana.
“…traditional genetic crosses outperform genetically modified crops by a wide margin.”
Alice Waters takedown.
Brits throw money at bees.
Red squirrel missing link found through DNA fingerprinting. Red squirrel pie, anyone? Ok ok, make it grey.
Mexican mangroves in trouble.
“Indigenous Peoples have contributed the least to the global problem of climate change but will almost certainly bear the greatest brunt of its impact.”
Go go goji.
Secretary General of the Nordic Council of Ministers and former Icelandic Prime Minister waxes lyrical about genebanks.
So there’s a Carolina Gold Rice Foundation. No, not Golden Rice. Via.
Help the Biodiversity Heritage Library decide on a citation format. Or not. whatever.

April 22, 2009April 21, 2009

Another place where the buffalo roam

The post I did yesterday about a small chunk of prairie still to be found in Calvary Cemetery, within the confines of metropolitan St Louis, ((Ah, but is it a remnant? Check out the comments on the original Economist piece.)) prompted Jeremy to tell me about his own favorite prairie remnant.

That would be the one inside the accelerator ring at Fermilab near Batavia, Illinois. Where they do indeed have a herd of bison contributing to the management of the ecosystem, as I — facetiously, I thought — suggested they should in St Louis. Too bad the beasts can’t be seen on Google Earth.

It looks like the Fermilab prairie is used as a resource by local schools, which seems like a great idea. I don’t know whether the teachers make anything in particular of the fact that at least one crop wild relative is to be found at the site. Helianthus mollis is not what I would call a star among crop wild relatives. For a start, it’s pretty difficult to cross with domesticated sunflower. And I don’t think it’s endangered or anything (or not yet). But it could be useful in illustrating to school kids an ecosystem service that is often overlooked — provision of genetic diversity for crop improvement.

Another thing it may well help illustrate is climate change. It looks like there’s really detailed data on many species, and it will be interesting to see what will happen — is already happening? — to their abundance and distribution. Maybe H. mollis will disappear from the Fermilab prairie in due course. Will it be able to go elsewhere? Or will we need to manage its relocation? To Canada…?

April 7, 2009April 7, 2009

More complex, more interesting, more hopeful

There is simply no way to summarize Willie Smits‘ Ted Talk. It is a masterful description of putting the complexity in an agricultural ecosystem to work to solve the problems of humans and orang-utans. Just astonishing. And so much more intellectually satisfying than a simplified system. Luscious.