Category: Information

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The youthing of Japanese agriculture

I know I nibbled it, but the recent discussion on Global Voices about how Japanese agriculture is changing really deserves a bit more attention. I was particularly struck by what may just be the green shoots of burgeoning interest in agriculture among the young. There’s a fair way to go, of course.

In the next 10 years, the majority of farmers in Japan will be 70 or older according to an Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry survey, mainly because the younger generation doesn’t want to take over the family business, many young farmers said.

But countering that is the trend for celebrities to get involved in farming. Plus there’s the pilot agriculture-experience program. And increasing use of the internet in farming, including blogging.

Japanese agriculture may just get the shot in the arm it needs after all.

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Carnival time

The latest (5th) Scientia pro Publica blog carnival is up at Pro-Science, offering a selection of blog posts that celebrate the “best science, nature and medical writing targeted to the public”. As ever, we scour the lists looking for things of an agricultural bent (no matter how vague). Overfishing Simplified… Then Complexified comes closest. Mauka to Makai follows some of the tangled webs that connect piscivores, and while definitely illuminating, it isn’t all that optimistic.

Later … Festival of the Trees is just out too, at Roundrock Journal. Lots of fruit stuff there. Seems to be a good day for nibbling fruit today.

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Nibble: Coconut, Punjab, Oak barrels, Schools, Podcasts, Origins squared, Apples, Fruit book

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Hundreds of 100 questions

Gosh, it’s difficult to keep track of this stuff. There’s been an explosion of “one hundred most important questions facing X” initiatives in the past couple of years. These are the ones I was able to track down, listed in no particular order, but there may be others out there, in which case let us know.

I think the only one we actually blogged about here was the plant science one.

Anyway, I bring all this up because I’ve just heard that Professor Jules Pretty from Essex University is now spearheading an effort to summarize the world’s agricultural challenges down to the top 100 priority questions. Of course, the most interesting thing about these lists will be the intersection among them. Talk about bang for your buck.

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“Global human sensor net” to be cast for biodiversity

Another attempt to harness the “wisdom of crowds” is in the offing. The eBiosphere informatics challenge is asking people around the world to send in observations of “species of interest.” That basically means mainly invasives and threatened species, for now. You can contribute photographs to Flickr or use Twitter or send an email. You don’t have to be a taxonomist: you’re asked to do your best on the identification, and they’ll bring experts in for confirmation. All the observations coming in will be integrated it with other scientific knowledge (e.g. taxonomy, maps, conservation status) on the species.

Now, if you’re a regular reader you’ll know this kind of approach is one we’ve occasionally contemplated here for crop wild relatives, landraces and other agrobiodiversity, in particular to monitor threats and erosion. So I’ll be watching closely.