- Community management of pests is less efficient (in Spanish). Something to do with farmers not sharing information quickly enough.
- Birds help to control vineyard pests.
- Small-scale farmers can feed the world, as any fule kno.
- Smithsonian celebrates urban ag. Meh.
- Organic food festival Dec 16th, Ahmedabad, India. “The food items should necessarily involve use of indigenous varieties”.
- USDA stops counting sheep. And goats, catfish and hops, among others.
Nibbles: Tarwi, Pests, Planthoppers, Subsidies, Cereal breeding, EU legislation,
- A nice long video on Lupinus mutabilis: TARWI – Semillas del Futuro Vol.1. It has always, in my experience, been “del futuro”.
- BBC asks CABI chief scientist to pick his top 10 plant pests. What, no taro leaf blight?
- Nor planthoppers of Iran?
- Divert just four years’ worth of EU agricultural subsidies to pay off pretty much all of Greece’s public debt, and we could stave off a second global financial crisis while helping some of the world’s poorest people all at the same time. Not gonna happen.
- Videos from 15th EWAC-Eucarpia Cereals Section Conference. Luigi not featured. Yet.
- EU may decide on new seed laws tomorrow. Or not. Patrick unpacks it a bit.
Nibbles: Palestinian genebank, PNG seeds, Local chickens, Landscapes
- New seed bank on West Bank. This one seems to be a genebank. I think.
- Seeds and needs in PNG.
- ILRI PowerPoint on Ethiopian chickens. But 46 slides?
- Everybody’s talking about the new Landscapes for People, Food and Nature thing, so I guess we should too.
Photos of silk culture in Kenya
Sericulture Slideshow: Wereh’s trip to Nairobi, Kenya was created by TripAdvisor.
Wereh promoted his interesting blog The Youths and Agriculture on a network I joined, and I’m happy to point to it here. Given the popularity of all our posts on raising silkworms in Kenya (and my own fond memories of keeping silkworms as a child) I took a look at a slideshow he’d made. It did rekindle those memories, although I question its real value. Honestly, Wereh, if you’re reading this: a decent photofilm would be much more useful, I suspect. They aren’t hard to make. There are people in Nairobi who might be able to help. Of course it would take longer and be more difficult than handing all your photos to a piece of software and bunging on some loud music and titles, but it would be more satisfying and result in a product you could be really proud of and that might do some good.
I’m embedding the video here with some trepidation, even though I have removed a few of the more gratuitous links. If it clogs up the works, I’ll take it down and just leave a link.
Livestock trifecta
Thanks to the hyperactive DAD-Net, three bits of news of interest for livestock diversity conservation:
- A report on Rare Breed International’s 8th Global Conference.
- New articles in the journal “Pastoralism” are open access online. But for how long?
- NordGen is seeking a leader of NordGen-Farm Animals. It says here there is more info online but I can’t find it. No doubt it’ll be up soon.
LATER: Oh, and here are the pictures from the Pakistani National Goat Show, including some of the winning entries.