Category: Forests & trees

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Multimedia cacao

A couple of days ago we Nibbled a set of cacao photos from Sustainable Harvest International. I thought at the time it probably deserved better exposure, and I’m happy to be given the excuse to provide it by the appearance on YouTube of a sweet little cartoon on the cacao tree, courtesy of Kew. And by the start of a series of posts on how chocolate is made, by Rachel Laudan.

And speaking of cacao, this just in: A London hedge fund last week took delivery of contracts for about 7% of the world’s cacao producction, according to a report in The Guardian. (h/t The Tracing Paper). Coincidentally, or not, the price of cacao has increased 150% over the past 18 months.

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CIFOR corrects itself

Those of you who headed over to CIFOR’s Facebook page to see whether they really did link there to a piece from the oil palm advocacy group Palmhugger trashing Greenpeace, as I said in my Nibble of a few minutes ago, will have been disappointed. It has gone. When I tried to comment on it, I was not allowed to, for the very good reason that the thing was not there any more. No, really. I’m almost 100% sure I didn’t imagine the whole thing. Did someone at CIFOR actually read the article and think better of publicizing it? What do they know about Palmhugger? I think we should be told.

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The ups and downs of trees

I’m really not sure how good an idea it is, but this “Great Green Wall of Africa” that people are talking about will certainly be a sight to see. And a bit of a food resource too if the indicative list of the species that will be used is anything to go by. While I was wondering whether to write about this, four other tree-related stories popped up in my feed reader, which convinced me. So apparently “between 1980 and 1997 England saw a 64% drop in trees,” which sounds pretty incredible, but is probably nothing compared to what is going on in southern Congo. On the plus side, Argentina seem to be building its own green wall down south. Although there’s nothing in the press piece about what species will be used. And finally, in Liberia, old rubber trees are being uprooted and recycled, hopefully as a prelude to replanting something.

LATER: And another, from Tasmania.