It is hot in Rome at the moment, and hotter still at my desk. In fact, my computer gave up the ghost on Friday and had to have a brain transplant. All back to normal, for now, but not a lot to report, apart from trying to maintain a steady stream of Nibbles. A couple that didn’t fit there. First, the picture: an undoctored image of two consecutive items from my Twitter stream that just happened to take my fancy. Secondly, a trial of pickling cucumber varieties that didn’t even mention asier (about which I too knew nothing until 4 days ago). That post is about a year old, but someone else linked to it in the past couple of days. And, if you’re thinking of something to do with excess cucumbers, and you fancy a touch of the exotic, how about creating a pressure-infused cucumber martini? Sounds like a blast. Cheers!
Nibbles: Feed lots, Tom Wagner, Ag Game, Cereal maps, Climate change, All change, Bananas extinct?, Permaculture course, Criminal urban ag, IPRs and GMOs
- Feed lots, from the ever-wonderful Nicola Twilley – is the first of our eye-openers.
- Bifurcated carrots is hosting a PDF profile of Tom Wagner, prolific breeder of tomatoes and potatoes.
- Katherine McDonald is keen on a farming simulator game. Games? Who has time? Maybe this weekend.
- 1969 maps of cereals in India. I’d love to see them updated. A project for …
- … Jacob van Etten. He and Emile Frison say that “Harnessing Diversity by Connecting People is the Key to Climate Adaptation in Agriculture”.
- On Dr Frison’s last day as DG of Bioversity International. So, farewell then …
- … the banana. Pat Heslop-Harrison consulted by BBC’s The Food Programme. Here’s his take on Bananas and their future.
- Cornell University is offering an online course in permaculture design.
- Wouldn’t it be cool if the city planners in Los Angeles decriminalized urban agriculture?
- Grist gets to grips with the locks that imprison GMO research – real and imaginary.
Nibbles: Hunger, Breeds, Jatropha, Value chains, Vegetables, Temperature, Quinoa
- The Lancet waxes optimistic on hunger and poverty goals.
- Korea keen to help compile information on African livestock.
- Is there nothing Jatropha cannot do? Now it’s a carbon sink.
- Fijian ginger and Ethiopian beans; two value chains explored in the latest New Agriculturalist.
- An International Symposium on Vegetables in August 2014, with lots of interest, but as it is under the ISHS you’ll have to pay to read about it.
- “Temperature alters population dynamics of common plant pests.” Ya don’t say.
- “Help a Bolivian farmer: Eat quinoa“. Now there’s a headline with attitude.
Nibbles: Obituary, Nomenklatura
- Kenneth John Frey, oat breeder and more besides, has died.
- A food forager discovers the importance of the proper names for plants.
Nibbles: DIY entomophagy, Svalbard movie, Perennial crops, IPM
- Grow your own delicious bugs for snacks. I feel duty bound to point out that the snacks in question are flies, not bugs. And where’s my donut?
- This short film about the Svalbard seed vault is not nearly as scary as it’s poster image.
- FAO hosts an expert workshop on perennial crops, for three days in August.
- The ENDURE network – “diversifying crop protection” – says Danish farmers love Integrated Pest Management. And the Endure network.