- Interesting stuff behind a paywall: Thai government rethinks sustainability. Not that interesting.
- Same goes for Latin American Agroecologists Build a Powerful Scientific and Social Movement.
- CNN Mexico shows-and-tells the Spanish-speaking world about urban agriculture. Thanks Jeff.
- Emile Frison briefs Eurocrats on the The key relationship between biodiversity and agriculture. Video!
- Reflections on the invention of agriculture in MesoAmerica.
- Nailing fraudulent labeling of Darjeeling tea. Throw the book at them, I say.
- Lassi: “It’s the taste.” Yeah but how healthy can you make the stuff?
- “We found large differences in manure levels…” I bet you did.
- Soil! Don’t treat it like dirt. (Jeremy’s favourite bumper sticker.)
- Veggies in windows, fish in cages.
Towards the establishment of genetic reserves for crop wild relatives and landraces in Europe
The ECPGR In situ and On-farm Conservation Network Coordinating Group and others are organizing a symposium entitled “Towards the establishment of genetic reserves for crop wild relatives and landraces in Europe” at the University of Madeira, Funchal (Portugal), from 13-16 September 2010.
Conservation biologists, protected area managers and experts from the agrobiodiversity sector engaged in the management and use of plant genetic resources for food and agriculture are welcome to attend the symposium.
Interested? You can find out more on the website of the Centre for Macaronesian Studies of the University of Madeira, one of the co-organizers.
Nibbles: Asses, Mapping pathogens, Oysters, Tea, Turkish biodiversity hotspot, Dolmades and sage, Yams festival, Pollen video, Agriculture and mitigation, Rarity, School feeding, Sheep
- Jeremy probes into wild asses at Vaviblog.
- Mapping the evolution of pathogens. And in kinda related news…
- The European oyster needs diversity. Well, natch.
- The tree forests of Yunnan, and, concidentally, the story of how the secret of their product got out.
- The Kaçkar Mountains at Yusufeli, northeast Turkey are in trouble. Any crop wild relatives there, among the bears and other charismatic megafauna
- Speaking of Turkey, here’s how to make one of its delicacies. But hey, if you don’t have vine leaves, you can use this.
- Having fun with yams.
- Drori does pollen.
- FAO’s Mitigation of Climate Change in Agriculture (MICCA) Project. Any agrobiodiversity-related stuff? Need to explore…
- “…conserving species may only require specific activities, such as collect and distributing seeds.”
- African school feeding programme uses “local” products. What would Paarlberg say? You can find out here, if you have 90 minutes to spare.
- British boffins breed self-shearing sheep. No, really.
Chile Pepper Institute goes all Web 2.0
Earth, Wind and Water‘s Tai Haku alerts us to the fact that the Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University is upping its web presence. A new website is growing. There will be a blog, apparently, although the RSS feed doesn’t seem to work yet. There’s a Facebook page. Tai Haku says there’s a Twitter stream too, but I wasn’t able to find it.
Prota4U: stopped making sense.
I’ve only lately begun to sip from the firehose that is Twitter. Many things about it puzzle me, but not unduly. One thing I do find odd is the feed called Prota4U. It’s an arm of The Prota Foundation, and Prota stands for Plant Resources of Tropical Africa. The Foundation’s aims are entirely laudable:
It intends to synthesize the dispersed information on the approximately 7,000 useful plants of Tropical Africa and to provide wide access to the information through Webdatabases, Books, CD-Rom’s and Special Products. … The objectives are to bring the published information, now accessible to the resourceful happy few, into the public domain. This will contribute to greater awareness and sustained use of the ‘world heritage of African useful plants’, with due respect for traditional knowledge and intellectual property rights.
One could quibble with the details, but the overall idea is sound. Prota4U — groovy to the nth degree — publishes an endless stream of tweets, roughly one every three minutes while it is awake, that don’t link to anything, often don’t say much, and frequently have nothing to do with useful plants of Tropical Africa. This particular rant was occasioned by this tweet:
Avena sativa — It has a floury texture and a mild, somewhat creamy flavour.
Fascinating. Just the thing to nibble on with my breakfast oats. But so what? And the tweet doesn’t go anywhere either. Annoyed, I Googled that descriptive phrase. And found it in two places. One, Plants for a Future’s database entry for Avena ludoviciana. The other, this tweet from Prota4U:
Avena byzantina – It has a floury texture and a mild, somewhat creamy flavour.
That too goes nowhere.
Of course in the greater scheme of things what Prota does with its information is no concern of mine, and I could simply stop following. I’m just totally puzzled by what it thinks it is doing. Someone, anyone, put me out of my misery, please.