- Vesicular arbuscular mychorriza help improve fallows.
- Google.org has a Predict and Prevent Initiative to catch outbreaks of human diseases before they happen. Would be nice to have something similar for threats of erosion of agrobiodiversity.
- Niger’s soudure food banks: could they act as village-level genebanks?
- You might call it meta-farming—the quasi-philosophical approach to raising crops and livestock that proceeds not from necessity or commercial aims but a concept.
- Farming in Russia: a slide show with narration.
- Army worm wine. WTF? Via. (They’re caterpillars.)
- A Kazak apple a day keeps the blue mold away.
- Neolithic China: not just rice.
- The oldest continuous cotton experiment in the world.
French man saves seeds in India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQBfwF0TVQ
I found this in a post at the Permaculture Research Institute, USA. The video is rather good, I reckon, although there were a couple of parts where I disagreed with the subtitling. More worrying, I think, is the sub-text. Do the Indians need a foreigner to teach them to save seeds? To get them access to traditional varieties from all over, that they can then trial in their own systems. Why no mention of the fact that what Stephan Fayon is doing in India, he could not do legally in France? Kokopelli India is an offshoot of Kokopelli Seed Foundation, which is a US vehicle to support the aims of Association Kokopelli in France. Amazingly, Association Kokopelli has had nothing new to say about its euros 35,000 fine for “unfair trading” since the fine was levied. It’s all very odd.
Nibbles: New Agriculturist, Sheep, Jatropha, Carrots
- All about potatoes.
- Mutant sheep to attack Australia.
- An Indian Jatropha genebank in the news. And a study to tell us where to collect more using some really cool software.
- The ‘Purple Dragon’ carrots are coming up in a variety of colours but mostly not purple.
“The maize equivalent of the grey wolf”
Not content with bringing you Our Man Hijmans’ dynamite written dispatches from Harlan II, today, The Spoken Word. David Williams, coordinator of the CGIAR’s System-wide Genetic Resources Programme, appeared on Insight, a daily in-depth interview programme hosted by radio station KXJZ in Sacramento, California. David talked about domestication, genetic modification, the history of collecting, the importance of crop wild relatives and much else besides.
Listen to it here. (About 12 minutes.)
Nibbles: Policy book, Seeds, Nicotiana, Kibera greens, Slow Food, Peas, Costa Rica
- Governing Agrobiodiversity by Regine Andersen. Anyone read it and want to review it for us?
- Louise Sperling on assessing the security of seed systems.
- Ike inflates Cohiba prices?
- Kibera slum goes very green. Via.
- “35 years ago, I was bringing seeds from France to California. Now I’m bringing seeds back to my friends in France.”
- John Innes Centre maps out a future for peas.
- Pictures from my recent trip to CATIE in Costa Rica, including some agrobiodiversity.