Do wander over to the latest edition of New Agriculturist, which, among other things, has a great feature giving examples of farmers adopting new crops and other ways of making a living as alternatives to illicit, environmentally damaging or otherwise inappropriate ones.
Straight dope
Speaking of “special products” from agricultural biodiversity, check this out.
Sustainable cacao conservation
Here’s a (relatively) new approach to sustainable genebank conservation, from Chocolate in Context: sponsor an accession. The International Cocoa Genebank in Trinidad will accept donations from US$20, which saves one tree for one year, to US$500, which saves a whole plot (no idea how many trees that is) for 10 years. And another web site, called Yachana Gourmet, preserves a tree on a farm, not in a genebank, and gives you access to tasty chocolate and other goodies.
A good life grown on coconuts
The latest update from COGENT — the International Coconut Genetic Resources Network — is online in the Coconut Google Group. It traces some of the activities of the Kamnoedtone family in Thailand, who have used coconut diversity to improve their lives considerably. The Google group is billed as an “Information exchange for the coconut palm Cocos nucifera” and COGENT is just one of many users. Apologies for my error earlier.
Bio-temperance in high places
After The Economist, here comes mighty Foreign Affairs with a definite money quote:
Filling the 25-gallon tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires over 450 pounds of corn — which contains enough calories to feed one person for a year.
Here’s the article’s executive summary:
Thanks to high oil prices and hefty subsidies, corn-based ethanol is now all the rage in the United States. But it takes so much supply to keep ethanol production going that the price of corn — and those of other food staples — is shooting up around the world. To stop this trend, and prevent even more people from going hungry, Washington must conserve more and diversify ethanol’s production inputs.
I hereby lay claim to bio-temperance as a concept and predict big things for it.