Where indeed.
Via.
Nibbles: GIPB, NPGS, Dogs for conservation, Harare gardens, Goat milk value added, Equator Prize, Humanitarian relief, Peruvian maize, Pseudo-cereals, Katine, Vavilov goes web 2.0, Travel, Haggis ban, African road datasets, Dyes, Adaptation pix, Baltic, AnGR, Jatropha
- GIPB revamps its website. Knowledge Resource Centre is ver. 4.0, no less.
- US National Plant Germplasm System explained to Canadians. Why? They have their own!
- Armadillo sniffing dogs.
- More urban farming in Zimbabwe.
- Interesting stuff you can make with goat milk.
- Who do you like for Equator Prize 2010? Avatar? No, wait, that’s something else. Well, actually…
- Nutrition for humanitarian workers.
- Large-eared white maize is ‘cultural heritage’ of Peru. So that’s all good then.
- Minor cereals and a gluten-free diet.
- Wanna talk to Katine? Ask about what the project is doing with/about agrobiodiversity, of course!
- Nikolay tweets!
- Agricultural and other assorted musings along the Mekong. Can’t help thinking that if you somehow aggregated all similar observations and geo-referenced them you’d come up with a pretty interesting picture of agriculture worldwide.
- A blow for Scottish agrobiodiversity and cuisine.
- Digitizing Africa’s roads.
- Natural dyes 101.
- IUCN photos of climate change adaptation. Includes agriculture! Well, sort of.
- Nordic agricultural scientists to discuss climate change adaptation. Grow bananas?
- Breeding Strategies for Sustainable Management of Animal Genetic Resources from FAO. Via.
- ATREE questions Jatropha.
Photographs of Old Hawaii and its taros see light of day
John Cho — he of the leaf blight-tolerant hybrids — has just posted some wonderful archive photographs of old Hawaiian taro culture to his Facebook page. He kindly agreed to us featuring one of them.
Here’s the backstory.
The images are from photographs archived in the State Archives that I selected and had them scanned by a third party. Sure would have been nice and less costly if the Archives digitized all the images that they have and allow the public to download them. But that is not the case and I had to hire a professional photographer contracted by the Archives to photograph then scan black and white negative images of taro photos that I had selected from the collection. I had planned to eventually put together a taro publication summarizing taro production and culture in Old Hawaii but have not quite gotten off the ground as yet. I decided to at least share some of the images on Facebook for the public to see and hopefully some day I would get off my duff and put the publication together. I also have several scans of taro culture from the Bishop Museum but require their permission to post their images on Facebook.
Nibbles: Tomatoes, Fattipuffs, Thinifers, Rice, Policy, IFAP, Small oats, Yams, Drought insurance, Siberian nomads, Cereal miscegenation, Fiji breadfruit, Introgression, Mudchute, Gordon Edgar, Coconuts, Eels, Cat worship, Biofuel breeding, Perennials
- Some heirloom tomatoes resist late blight, others not so much.
- Overweight or obese Americans at 68%, and holding steady. No epidemic, say free-thinkers.
- “No wonder kids are gaining weight.” But they aren’t, see above. (Where’s that sarc-mark when you need it?)
- Hydroelectric scheme to save Ifugao rice terraces, cut carbon emissions. W-w-w?
- Climate Change and Agrobiodiversity updates us on hot policy news. Thanks.
- IFAP updates its farmers on agricultural biodiversity. Thanks again.
- Small oats genebank evaluations make big progress with young crofters.
- Yam festivities in the Philippines.
- Psst, you want drought insurance for your camel herd? Oh, and Jeremy wants to know why this IFPRI stuff didn’t find its way into the story.
- “The ability to roam freely enables people and animals to exploit or avoid a wide range of natural and manmade habitats.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Barley helps wheat. But how, exactly? I think we should be told.
- Fiji sets up breadfruit genebank Which will hopefully help local agricultural entrepreneurs.
- Anastasia on introgression. At length.
- The biggest urban farm in Europe.
- A bite of Cheese(monger).
- Coconuts bad for birds bad for soil bad for plants bad for crabs. Ok then, let’s cut the damn things down, shall we?
- Cockney cuisine takes a turn for the worse. Well would you Adam and Eve it?
- Egyptian cat temple pix. Miaow.
- “…the first biofuel crop breeding programs for low-input systems are likely to accelerate progress by focusing on grass–legume bicultures.”
- And another from the Land Institute: “…harvested perennial
grasslands provide valuable ecological benchmarks for agricultural sustainability.”
Kenyans confused about traditional foods
The case for the prosecution: Kenyans are losing their food culture. The case for the defence: traditional foods are being revived and this is attracting the attentions of multinational. I suspect the truth, as ever, is somewhere in between. How so very boring.