- More insights into that early Amazonian agriculture.
- 24th Congress of the Latin America Association of Potato, Cusco, 23-28 May “will focus on the conservation and usage of potato’s genetic resources”.
- New book on seed trade and agricultural biodiversity. Tanzania not studied.
- Nice slide show on fodder shrubs for dairy farmers in Kenya.
- Wisconsin caviar?
Nibbles: Consortium?, Sheep diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Agroforestry, Almonds, Chicken breeding, Restoration, More tree management, Vegetable gardening, Wheat domestication
- IRRI tries to raise $300 million for rice in Asia. Including for that genebank of theirs?
- Sheep phylogeographic genetic structure weak, but not completely absent, thank goodness.
- Examples of sustainable biofuels. No snickering at the back there.
- How to manage tree genetic resources under climate change. By some friends.
- Almonds 101.
- “…testing the genetic and immunological limits of poultry.” And then eating the results.
- Grassland restoration needs to take into account functional diversity. And DNA?
- Presentation on community forestry management in Niger. Nice story.
- Senegalese vegetable farming project uses terra preta but modern seed. Go figure.
- Ancient farmers off the hook for loss of key wheat gene. Plant breeders to blame, apparently.
Nibbles: ILRI, Diversitas, Trees, Water use, Soil, Kenya, Microlivestock, Truffles, Climate data, Forests, Diseases, Plant breeding survey, Beer, and more beer, Pollinators
- ILRI annual programme meeting thing gets Twitter treatment. Web 2.0 seizes up.
- Via EcoagriculturePartners newsletter, news that agroBiodiversity has a new website. Web 1.0 surrenders.
- And the prize for the weirdest name for a tree-planting initiative goes to…
- The water footprint of pasta is greater than that of pizza. Still no cure for cancer.
- Microbes good for soil. I see that, and I raise you termites. Take that, Dirt Diva.
- Fish farming in dryland Kenya. Must get out to see one of these next time I’m there, maybe set one up on mother-in-law’s farm. And get her one of these funky backpacks while I’m at it. Wouldn’t want her to laze about.
- Farmer Brown (sic) from Ghana talks about his grasscutters.
- Ever wonder how one cultivates truffles? Wonder no more.
- FAO librarian answers agroclimatological query. Lots of databases for you to explore is the result.
- And also from FAO, the latest on the state of the world’s forests. More databases no doubt involved.
- Damn, you mean diversity can be good for disease?
- Study says that to “be effective plant breeders, … should also be equipped with strong critical thinking and time management skills, and a well-founded work ethic.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Climate change to affect beer? Now it’s personal!
- Wonder how Ugandans feel about that? Guide to Ugandan Beer, Part 1.
- Pollinators do the Harlem Flutter.
The Great BBC Veggie Seed Giveaway
The BBC’s Dig In programme is asking people to apply for a “free Dig In pack, containing seeds for five easy-to-grow veg varieties, full instructions and stickers.” A nice enough idea, but why not take the opportunity of promoting some rare and endangered heirlooms? Not everyone is content with easy-to-grow…
LATER: News of another British planting material give-away just out…
A pioneering biologist almost discusses the keys to crop conservation
Because right now, still, the planet is blind. In other words I can step into the genebank of Brazil and understand it. But 99.9999 percent of the planet cannot. And so whether you’re eating in a restaurant in New York City, whether you’re a Nigerian farmer, or whether you’re a school kid walking to school in Arizona — it doesn’t matter. You are blind; you are illiterate. And this gives you the chance to be able to read. That will change our relationship to agrobiodiversity enormously. And I feel that’s the only chance for [combating] apathy. If people can “read” agrobiodiversity, they will then, for their own reasons, find it much more valuable to be interested in it, and as a consequence, [are] much more likely to be willing to save key pieces of it… And the only way that societies will be tolerant of big genebanks is if those big genebanks are offering them something. And if you’re blind to what’s in it, you’ve suddenly cut the list of what it can offer you down very severely…
The world has 1700 different crop genebanks. Every one of those things is someone’s salary, someone’s career, someone’s motivation. And they couldn’t care less about the whole thing. They care about the pieces in their backyard. And so the outcome is that you have 1700 collections which add up to x percent of the whole genepools. Well, if you ask me, I will tell you brutally that 50 percent of those will be dead and worthless in 50 years. But that doesn’t help the guy whose job it is to protect it, to raise money for it. He wants his income now. And the fact that it’s going to die 50 years from now couldn’t matter less…
I had to give a five-minute talk in California a few months ago, and I found myself saying, “Look, the threats are fragmentation, apathy, climate change, and small size.” Those are the threats. And the solutions are endowment, bigger size, and information systems…
Well, the legendary conservationist Daniel Janzen didn’t say these things. Not quite, anyway. But I didn’t change many words, and not by much. He was talking about protected areas, but it is quite amazing how similar are the problems of ex situ conservation of crop diversity. Too bad the two things are so often seen as antithetical.