Climate change

February 6, 2009February 6, 2009

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 â€œmelon beltâ€ 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.

January 30, 2009

Call for info

Got any information on the effect of climate change on heritage apples? Barbara Tremain-Howard over at Fruit Forum would like to hear from you.

January 24, 2009January 24, 2009

Nibbles: Khush, Reindeer, Rice, Truffle, Quince

Legendary rice breeder sets example for Punjab students.
Sami worried about what climate change will mean for their reindeer, try to do something about it.
Rice tillering gene deconstructed.
Truffle pirated.
AÄŸzÄ±nÄ±z ÅŸirin olsun!

January 24, 2009January 23, 2009

Vienna stressfest

I know it’s a long shot, but are any of our readers going to the conference on Plant Abiotic Stress Tolerance next month in Vienna? It seems to be mainly about Arabidopsis, but the final session on breeding might just hold some agrobiodiversity interest, and if so we’d love to know about it.

January 23, 2009January 23, 2009

Meat is murder

Murder to produce sustainably, that is. And here are three stories to prove it. In the arid West of the US, overgrazing has been stripping away the ground cover, and the soil, for decades. Some enterprising ranchers have finally seen the light, however, and are experimenting with how they graze cattle, moving their herds more, giving the vegetation time to bounce back, mimicking the behaviour of the mobile herbivores of the African savannas. But the jury is still out on whether it works, whether “sustainable ranching” is just the oxymoron many environmentalists have always said it is. Meanwhile, in Tibet, climate change is drying up streams. Shepherds have to go twice as far to take their flocks to water. Farmers have to dig twice as far down to strike water in their wells. And finally, all over the world, frogs are being driven to extinction because of our taste for their legs. It’s enough to drive one to vegetarianism.