Featured

July 29, 2015

Featured: More melons

My mate Danny knows a think or two about Maldivian melons:

Maldives is an interesting place for watermelons. I worked on the island of Thoddoo (in Alif Alif Atoll) back in the nineties on an IPM programme for watermelons. Thoddoo is the largest producer of watermelons (or was?) in the Maldives, strategically targeting the demand during the holy month of Ramadan in nearby Male.

But are they like Remaissance melons? Not that kind of melon, I guess.

July 23, 2015

Featured: Melons

Nate Kleinman of Experimental Farm Network is not at all upset we reprinted his melon post from Facebook:

Thanks for posting this. We’re clearly excited about these interesting melons. At the end of the season we plan to compile information on everything we grew this year and last to report back to the USDA. This not only helps their science, but also helps them justify their budgets in the inevitable DC budget fights ahead. It’s important for people who use this unique and critically important resource (the National Plant Germplasm System) to lay out and explain what’s so special about it. These melons are just the tip of the iceberg.

Wish all genebank users were so obliging.

July 15, 2015July 15, 2015

Featured: Diversity

Matthew parses “diversity,” as used by Secretary Vilsack:

I wasn’t there, but I have heard him speak about “diversity” several times before and he usually brings diversity up in the context of types (organic, conventional, biotech) and scales of farming systems. I’ve also heard him bring it up in terms of racial and gender diversity in farming.

So, probably NOT crop diversity? Seems a pity.

June 25, 2015

Featured: great essay on agricultural biodiversity

Because he’s way too modest to do this himself, and because I agree 100%, here’s what Stephanie Greene, of the USDA, had to say about Luigi’s essay on agricultural biodiversity:

You have written a wonderful essay that manages to beautifully describe the importance of crop diversity to the lay public and that resonates with both sides of the technological divide.

All hail Luigi.

May 4, 2015

Featured: TR4

Anne Vezina thinks the media is misleading us on TR4:

The general public is being lulled by the media into believing that the disease only affects one variety out of 1,000 or so.

That can’t possibly be true, can it?

Fresh Nibbles

Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from its cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cacao’s traditional growing belt.
And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.

Published on August 16, 2026