- “Countries can clear massive amounts of forest and still claim that deforestation had not occurred“. Wha?
- Biodiverse agriculture to meet climate challenge. Really?
- Diversity for Life campaign launches, but Official Site links to wrong Offical Site. This is where it should go.
- Water chestnuts. Fascinating.
- No sign of agricultural biodiversity in agricultural research masterplan.
- Vital Christmas supplies of Crataegus mexicana — aka Tejocote — no longer illegal in the US. h/t Rachel.
Nibbles: Forest fires, integration
- Fire-fighters should heed forest diversity. Now there’s a thought.
- “Resilient integration of industrial and organic agriculture.” Now there’s a thought.
Oxfam goes to town on the Other Green Revolution
We’ve blogged briefly about how vast areas of the Sahel, far from degenerating, are actually experiencing something of an agricultural rebirth, thanks in some small measure to tree-planting. ((Skeptics may point to rainfall cycles; I’m not sure it matters.)) A post from Oxfam America summarizes some of those efforts, and explains that Oxfam brought some of the people responsible — elevated to eco-hero status — to Washington DC “for discussions with US legislators about local solutions to food insecurity and climate change.” We haven’t noticed any reports of those discussions, but are happy to draw attention to the high impact of local solutions to local problems, especially when they make use of agricultural biodiversity. Thanks to CAS-IP, which has an expanded gloss on Oxfam’s efforts.
Nibbles: Cryopreservation, Hunger, Rice
- US scientists put ash diversity in the deep freeze, for when they’ve solved the emerald ash borer menace.
- Millions fed: proven successes in agricultural development. A talk on 12 November in Washington DC. Jeremy sez: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail”.
- War! Huuh! What is it good for? Hybrid rice! Huh?
Helping the guarango
And here’s another nice agrobiodiversity video, though not part of the contest Jeremy refers to in the previous post. It’s about the guarango (Prosopis pallida) tree of the Peruvian coast. Once central to pre-Columbian culture for its pods, wood and ecosystem services, it is now “near extinction in the Ica-Nasca region.” But it’s not going down without a fight, and it is getting some help, for example from a Kew reforestation project. Thanks, Charlotte.