- A way out of hell: workshop on Database Challenges in Biodiversity Informatics
- Potato man honoured.
- Farm diversity reduces nitrogen runoff.
- Darwin on the Farm, from our friends at the Global Crop Diversity Trust.
- Yeast and wheat genome sequencing going gangbusters.
- Coffee!
- Fermented tigernuts more nutritious? No, they’re not from an endangered species. Via.
- Cow water!
- Lots of medicinal plants conservation projects going on in India.
Blogging the big birthday: One man’s selection
As the entire thinking world prepares to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, tomorrow, lots of people (ourselves including) are unable to contain themselves. One of those is R. Ford Denison, who shares a selection of Darwin quotes that he was preparing to take to a celebratory dinner. A great selection it is too, revealing Denison’s own status as a man who takes evolution in agriculture very seriously. I wouldn’t say that this was my own favourite, but it is one that I had not noted before:
Look at a plant in the midst of its range, why does it not double or quadruple its numbers? We know it can perfectly well withstand a little more heat or cold, dampness or dryness, for elsewhere it ranges into slightly hotter or colder, damper or drier districts. In this case we can clearly see that if we wish in imagination to give the plant the power of increasing in number, we should have to give it some advantage over its competitors, or over the animals which prey on it.
There’s more where that came from.
Nibbles: Bananas, Sorghum, Agave, Big vs small, Cauliflower, Wine, Chestnut, Farmers’ rights, India, Aquaculture, Medicinals, Tarpan
- How they grow bananas in Fadan Karshi, Nigeria.
- How they grow sorghum in Karamoja, Uganda.
- How tequila is ruining small farms in Mexico. Or is it?
- How small farms cannot feed Africa. Or can they? Join the debate! Via.
- How the Brits plan to rebrand cauliflower. This I gotta see.
- How the ancient Chinese made wine out of rice, honey, and fruit. Pass the bottle.
- How Georgia is mapping where its chestnuts used to be.
- How farmers’ rights are being implemented.
- How Indian agriculture should move beyond wheat and rice. Ok, but what would everybody eat?
- How microsatellites can be used to help catfish breeding.
- How Ni Wayan Lilir is helping people learn about the traditional healing herbs of Bali.
- How the Brits brought back the Konik.
Is all climate change bad?
Julián RamÃrez-Villegas commented on the 4th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture, which we nibbled last week. We’re elevating his comment to a guest post.
I was on that conference last week (the conservation agriculture one). Surprisingly, all people there are completely [certain] that climate change is completely bad (and that there are no chances of survival for our agricultural systems while we don’t switch to conservation agriculture). They always point [out] the bad side of each issue (i.e. they say: more rainfall means flooding and less rainfall means more water consumption) and put that as an universal truth, which is not very scientific I guess, but you judge.
They also have these global-averages indicating that population is growing up to a number we won’t be able to feed in 2050, that water resources are to decline worldwide, that yields are completely falling down, and that soil is about to lose its most important fertility properties. But I wasn’t able to find any specific case where all those things could happen at the same time. However, at the end of each presentation you find the phrase “more resources for R & D”, which from my side looks a bit suspicious.
Say, I’m not sure about what could happen up to 2050, but we have these GC models saying that impacts vary according to different areas. And I wonder if one could try to change all agricultural systems in the world (one by one) using such global averages and coarse statistics.
And a very quick question: “how would one expand/intensify a conservation agriculture system, if it is supposed to be used in smallholdings, which owners don’t have either the land or the financial support to expand/intensify their systems?”
The perils of diversification
Alex Tiller forecasts a price spike in the cost of salads and melons in the US this summer as a result of a drought in California’s Central Valley. Farmers are abandoning those crops to save water for even more valuable crops, like almonds. Tiller suggests that
The coming cost spikes in lettuce and melon may provide incentives for growers outside the “melon belt†to invest in the production of these popular fruit and vegetable crops.
Right. But unless those farmers can fashion some kind of new deal with their buyers they’ll be able to kiss goodbye to their investment and their income just as soon as California gets another normally wet season, which it will, soon enough. Prices will plummet, and the buyers will abandon (more) local suppliers to save a couple of cents. You mark my words.