- Is the World Producing Enough Food? The NY Times has the answer(s).
- Aussies trying to get to grips with salinity through breeding. Very cool, but maybe they should just stop growing wheat and think of some other crop?
- Potato Park potatoes to be parked in the Bóveda Global de Semillas de Svalbard.
- You know what those naughty Vikings used to say: “Let there be mirth, mead and fornication!”
- Adding value to peanuts in Bolivia. KIT video.
Egypt and agriculture
There are many things one could say about the changes in Egypt, and it seems that someone, somewhere, is saying each of them. Rather than add to the noise, I want to point to something rather good I saw at the Ancient Foods blog: a a hymn to the Ancient Egyptian Goddess of the Harvest Renenutet.
I will make the Nile swell for you,
without there being a year of lack and exhaustion in the whole land,
so the plants will flourish, bending under their fruit.
The land of Egypt is beginning to stir again,
the shores are shining wonderfully,
and wealth and well-being dwell with them,
as it had been before.
There’s just one thing that puzzles me about this rather fine invocation, and its name is Aswan. Has it been an overall benefit, now that the Nile no longer swells as once it did?
Pavlovsk mainstay passes away
Leonid Burmistrov, Leading Scientist of the Fruit and Berry Crop Genetic Resources Department of the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry (VIR) in St Petersburg, has died. From the recent announcement on the VIR website:
Leonid Burmistrov has made a significant contribution to the preservation of the threatened fruit and berry crop collections located at the Pavlovsk Experiment station of VIR. He gave 60 interviews to the Russian and foreign mass media. Thanks to his efforts, the collection continues to exist.
Nibbles: Egyptian mysteries, Svalbard, Pineapple fabric, Chinese alcohol, Seed Saving
- “Readers, florists, Egyptians, can you help?” Maybe some of them are crops.
- Seeds move from South to North for safety. Australia backs up to Norway.
- Tired of your hair shirt? Try pineapple fibre.
- The history of alcohol in China; Happy Rabbit.
- How to save heirloom seeds (for people near Central Arkansas).
- Food and War (not what you think; a book review)
Nibbles: Barley, Fellowship, Supplier, Malnutrition, choices, Rice and climate change
- “[A]n ancient barley grain”. Just the one. One only. From Neolithic England.
- Crawford Fund Fellowship “for an agricultural scientist from a selected group of developing countries whose work has shown significant potential”.
- New World Seeds & Tubers, a supplier thereof.
- Alternative remedies for late potato blight.
- Mild underweight a better indicator of childhood malnutrition than severe. Press release and paper.
- “Food or the environment? Mixed signals confuse farmers.” There has to be a choice?
- Indonesia sorts out its rice-adapted-to-climate-change problem.