Notice of the publication of the new book “African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture” by Earthscan allows me to point out that Bioversity has also just published a study of the impact of its interventions in that area of agrobiodiversity.
Nibbles: Mead, Treaty, Zoonoses, Flowery margins, Post-doc, Sacred Groves, Posters, Maize in Africa.
- Mead, part 4. You can find 1-3 yourselves.
- Plant genetic resources key to food security. The Jakarta Post gets it.
- Long, complex post from ILRI on zoonoses; diseases that infect people and animals.
- What are all the flowers for? The Provincial Agricultural Chamber of East Flanders seeks answers. h/t PAR.
- Wanna do a post-doc on Comprehensive modelling of agro-biodiversity in relation to seed exchange networks?
- Sacred groves threatened, by Times of India.
- Fabulous botanical posters, many featuring useful species, and all useful information. Of course tomatoes are fruits.
- I meant to write in detail about how Untapped crop data from Africa predicts corn peril if temperatures rise, but you know, life intervened.
Thereby hangs a tale
What to call a monoculture if it isn’t a monoculture?
If someone is serious about a critique of modern agriculture, “monoculture” is not the best term to use – particularly if you want to communicate with farmers. The real issue is the difference between “diverse rotations” and “non-diverse rotations.”
Yup, that’s going to work.
Steve Savage offers his interpretation of the word, and how not to use it if you “are being critical of mainstream farming”. As I noted on his blog, I’m not about to do a point-by-point rebuttal. Life’s too short. And language is alive. But if that photograph of “a 700+ year-old farming system in China” is a monoculture, I’m a cantankerous nutcase with a blog to prove it.
Maps of Russian agrobiodiversity online, again
We blogged about AgroAtlas some years back, but a big article in USDA’s newsletter gives us a welcome opportunity of pointing out again how cool it is. The much-awaited GIS layers are in a funny format, though, which I’d be interested to know how to convert to something that can be viewed in Google Earth.
