Nibbles: Prickly pear, Corridors, Nutrition, Backyard chickens, SW agriculture, Non-wood forest products, Mexican ungulates, Chinese sheep

Discussing threats to livestock diversity

A very informative contribution came in today from the moderator of the DAD-Net e-discussion on analyzing threats to animal genetic resources, listing a number of success stories:

1. Incentives have been used in several cases to conserve and even rescue breeds that were nearly extinct because of the reduction in population size due to the elimination by more productive breeds. Several examples are provided by the EuReCa (European Regional cattle Breeds) network in their breed of the month archive. The site for each breed also shows how breed societies can be effective in the management of AnGR. Notable cases include: Eastern Finncattle, Kerry cattle, Polish Red.

2. Exploration of niche markets through the branding of products from an endangered breed can reverse the trend of a particular breed.

3. Effect of the expansion of industrialised agriculture on indigenous breeds and how the breeds were driven almost to extinction.

4. How crossbreeding programmes (to increase productivity) coupled with unfavourable policies can be a threat to indigenous AnGR. See story on the Vechur cattle breed in India and how it was rescued from extinction.

Using photos to share knowledge about agrobiodiversity

ResourceShelf reported on a Library of Congress blog post on the photographs in the US Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information collection, the most popular among which are now available in a Flickr group under the heading FSA/OWI Favorites. That led me to some wonderful colour photos from the 30s and 40s from the same source. One of them particularly caught my eye. Not because it’s particularly well framed or for its dramatic subject matter. It’s just a pretty standard shot of some harvested oats fields in southeastern Georgia taken in May 1939. But someone — a Mr Raymond Crippen, actually, who sounds as if he has first-hand experience of wartime Georgian oat fields — has taken the trouble to annotate different parts of the image:

The most common grains in shocks were wheat, oats, barley. Farmers hated working with the barley. The “beards” stuck to sweaty arms, found their way down shirts – and they caused great itching.

This strikes me as a great way of documenting and sharing indigenous knowledge of agricultural practices and biodiversity. Has it ever been tried in a more formal way?

Down with the invader!

Happy International Day for Biological Diversity! This year’s theme: invasives.

Invasive alien species exacerbate poverty and threaten development through their impact on agriculture, forestry, fisheries and natural systems, which are an important basis of peoples’ livelihoods in developing countries. This damage is aggravated by climate change, pollution, habitat loss and human-induced disturbance.

Next year we’ll do something special on this day, we promise…

Nibbles: Biodiversity loss, Mapping, Mongolia, Ag origins, Polynesian voyaging, Hybrid fruits, Apricots, Bedouins, Donkeys, Chile, Cuba