- 17 years of data confirm fears of bee decline.
- Slideshow on Egyptian Deserts Genebank; prepare to be astounded.
- Slideshow on US National Plant Germplasm System; prepare to be even more astounded.
- Livestock and climate change, a background paper from ILRI.
- “Most new farmland comes from cutting tropical forest.” The good news: it’s corporate, so can be pressured to stop.
Nibbles: Irish Seedsavers, Australia, Trees, Wheat genome, Reforestation, Spices
- Irish Times does seed saving, well.
- Australia too considers genebanks. In depth.
- “[T]he largest private collection of wild trees in Britain.” All grown from seed.
- James and the Giant Corn gives you the straight dope on the wheat genome … so we don’t have to. Thanks.
- Swiddeners can help with reforestation?
- KIT tells us all about how to make spices sustainable.
Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Fun fungus, ALVs, Breadfruit
- Best round up yet of what’s happening at Pavlovsk Experiment Station.
- Nature’s report on Pavlovsk is good too.
- Pavlovsk making waves in India too. S.Ananthanarayanan shares a write-up in The Statesman, Kolkata.
- More on that Chinese insect-eating fungus, or Chinese Love Flower. Yuck.
- A one-woman crusade for traditional African leafy vegetables. Right.
- Breadfruit trees in Jamaica. From the Trees that Feed Foundation, a new one on me.
Nibbles: Beer and fungus, Maize breeding, Coconut on the Salalah plain, Zen, Camel, Grazing, Berries
- Beer with shrooms. Well, not quite, but one can hope.
- No more corn detasseling? Say it ain’t so.
- “Oman to Plant 100,000 Coconut Trees in Dhofar.” That’s in the south of the country, a fascinating area. And one asks, as ever: What varieties, and what’s going to happen to the local material?
- Be like the bamboo, man.
- From DAD-Net, news of a mini-conference on the camel. And an article on same.
- The struggle for forest grazing rights in India.
- Dump blueberries, eat local berries, Brits told. Pavlovsk still in trouble.
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.