- Let the berry wars commence. Thanks to Hannes for taking sides.
- Women active in African agriculture. Well I never.
- Iraq’s marshes in trouble again. This time it’s drought.
- Gorosoe in Korea: “…it soothes my stomach after a hangover.”
- Vavilov set right on sorghum in China.
- Protected pine forest threatened by logging in Russia. Nuts!
- 1st International IFOAM Conference on Organic Animal and Plant Breeding.
- International Banana Symposium: Global Perspectives on Asian Challenges.
Nibbles: Indigenous knowledge, Buffalo, Wheat rust, Cassava, New Green Revolution, Environmentalism, Millennium Seedbank, USDA, Pig
- India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library a bulwark against piracy. Ahoy me mateys!
- Oh give me a home, where the buffalo-cow hybrid roamed.
- “We’ve found one of the most important disease resistance genes in wheat.”
- Cassava on its way to being a complete meal. Oh joy.
- Usual suspects debate GM.
- The history of the American wilderness movement deconstructed.
- Australia’s Northern Territory needs more collectors.
- “USDA People’s Garden announced today will eliminate 1,250 square feet of unnecessary paved surface at the USDA headquarters and return the landscape to grass.” Michelle likes it.
- Pig domestication, for Vavilov and now.
Nibbles: Easter Island, Quail, Kimchi, Assisted migration, Solar, Training materials, Ancient wine squared, Economics, Wild food
- People of Rapa Nui innovated as they collapsed.
- “Extinct” Bird Seen, Eaten. Sorry, National Geographic, but I can’t better that headline. Worthy of Fark.
- Kimchi madness.
- Coming to a protected are near you: moving species to save them from climate change. CWR, anyone?
- Shrinking the C footprint of traditional peanut processing. Via.
- 15 Evolutionary Gems: alas, nothing from crops, livestock. Surely domestication could have made it in there.
- “Bulgarian wine cellars have already announced that they will plant vines with the mysterious and newly recovered variety of grapes near the Orpheus tomb.”
- And more ancient wine, this time from Malta.
- Bioversity International wises up on dismal science, launches new economics webpages.
- Wild forest foods big hit at FAO booth at Lao and International Food Festival last weekend in Vientiane.
The lactose reflux problem
Stephen J. Gould said that “there’s been no biological change in humans for 40,000 or 50,000 years.” Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending beg to differ and, in “The 10,000 Year Explosion,” point to evidence for a recent acceleration in human evolution (e.g. lactose intolerance) ((Fans of the Coen brothers will recognize the title of this post as a kind of a quote from one of their films, and will indulge me. Others, not, on both counts. So be it.)) and blame it on agriculture. Not everyone agrees. I can’t help finding the idea of the end of genetic change somewhat preposterous, a priori. ((Culture doesn’t replace genetic change, “culture constrains genetic changes.”)) But one must find data. Check out the interview with Cochran at 2blowhards. ((It’s in several parts, and some of the internet buzz on the book is rounded up in this installment.)) What all this means to us here, of course, is that when we assess variation in the nutritional value of agrobiodiversity, we need to remember that that value may differ among human individuals and populations.
Agriculture in Old Japan
A woman is threshing rice stalks with a Senbakoki (åƒæ¯æ‰±ã, threshing machine), while a man is carrying straw bags balanced on a pole. In the back drying rice plants can be seen, it was customary to dry freshly cut rice plants before threshing commenced.
There aren’t that many photographs on the Old Photos of Japan website dealing with agriculture, but this is a great one, and the explanatory notes describe the rice cultivation calendar and point to a useful wikipedia article on Agriculture in the Empire of Japan. Would be interesting to match up with Vavilov’s observations on Japanese agriculture.