Category: Featured

Kevin Mayes has been thinking about ecological economics in light of capital intensive farming:

Nature recognises only thermodynamic efficiency. Economic efficiency is merely a human artifice.

Not sure about that “merely,” but it is a provocative thought.

Robert lays it on the line:

What a shameful misrepresentation to say that the new [rice] variety “boosts yields nearly six-fold”.

And he explains why.

Dave corrects what he sees as a mistake:

IBPGR (founded in 1974) had nothing to do with the recommendation by the CGIAR TAC in 1972 to establish or amplify a global network of genebanks.

Plus lots more exciting insights!

Anastasia finds our disparaging remarks frustrating:

I have to say I find your disparaging remarks frustrating.

Read why. What do you think?

Natalia, who runs a mobile phone service, could plug a gap:

We have a database of farmers all across Kenya – we know they location, what they grow and size of the farm. At the moment we have a database of 30.000 farmers, but plan to expand up to 100 k in the next few months. We are searching for the way to commercialise this data source.

And there’s the rub. Advertisers may wish to pay for that list, but would the farmers really benefit? Alas, for the purposes of building a public good, like a better distribution map, no-one is likely to stump up. But Natalia, just think of the goodwill your company could derive if you shared the data, suitably anonymized!