- People of Rapa Nui innovated as they collapsed.
- “Extinct” Bird Seen, Eaten. Sorry, National Geographic, but I can’t better that headline. Worthy of Fark.
- Kimchi madness.
- Coming to a protected are near you: moving species to save them from climate change. CWR, anyone?
- Shrinking the C footprint of traditional peanut processing. Via.
- 15 Evolutionary Gems: alas, nothing from crops, livestock. Surely domestication could have made it in there.
- “Bulgarian wine cellars have already announced that they will plant vines with the mysterious and newly recovered variety of grapes near the Orpheus tomb.”
- And more ancient wine, this time from Malta.
- Bioversity International wises up on dismal science, launches new economics webpages.
- Wild forest foods big hit at FAO booth at Lao and International Food Festival last weekend in Vientiane.
(Super)marketing agriculture
The latest ICT Update from CTA is all about market information systems in developing countries. A few months ago it was fair trade. ((Note that, as with us here, you can have a look at the geographical coverage of ICT Update’s articles.)) One of the featured articles is about Kenya’s commodity exchange, and the changes it has undergone since ICT Update first reported on it in 2002. This now officially qualifies as a trend. There was also news today that Ghana is thinking about following — and learning from — Ethiopia in setting up an “agricultural commodity exchange … to bring producers, buyers and consumers together to trade on a common platform by providing ready market for farm gate products from the agricultural centers.”
And far, far away, at the other end of the supply chain, Supermarket Secrets is a long (very long!) look behind the scenes at modern supermarket “practices that have significant implications on the health of our environment, our animals, our food — and ultimately our own health.” ((Posted using ShareThis.))
LATER: Never rains but it pours. Here’s an example of such practices, from a review of the book Movable Feasts, by Sarah Murray, which sounds like a must-read: “Norwegian salmon is harvested, frozen, and sent by container ship to China, where it is de-boned in a factory, refrozen, and then sent on to markets in Europe and the US.”
Speaking of tubers …
“They’re the Ingrid Bergman to oca’s Marilyn Monroe.”
Rhizowen, the freshest new (old) voice in weird and wonderful veg is at it again with another go at Crap Crops of the Incas. This time the object of his adoration is ulluco. I wonder how they’d do on Vanuatu?
Agriculture in Old Japan
A woman is threshing rice stalks with a Senbakoki (åƒæ¯æ‰±ã, threshing machine), while a man is carrying straw bags balanced on a pole. In the back drying rice plants can be seen, it was customary to dry freshly cut rice plants before threshing commenced.
There aren’t that many photographs on the Old Photos of Japan website dealing with agriculture, but this is a great one, and the explanatory notes describe the rice cultivation calendar and point to a useful wikipedia article on Agriculture in the Empire of Japan. Would be interesting to match up with Vavilov’s observations on Japanese agriculture.
Agrobiodiversity and the food crisis
UNEP has just published The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. ((Nellemann, C., MacDevette, M., Manders, T., Eickhout, B., Svihus, B., Prins, A. G., Kaltenborn, B. P. (Eds). February 2009. The environmental food crisis – The environment’s role in averting future food crises. A UNEP rapid response assessment. United Nations Environment Programme, GRID-Arendal. ISBN: 978-82-7701-054-0)) I found out about it because its illustrations are separately available on the GRID-Arendal website and I subscribe to its feed. Which is weird, because I’d have thought UNEP would make more of this. Maybe I just missed the announcement of the launch.
Any agricultural biodiversity in it, I hear you ask. Actually, perhaps surprisingly, yes. There’s a box on “Using crop genetic diversity to combat pests and diseases in agriculture” on page 57. There’s a box on “Enhancing sustainability through the use of crop wild relatives” on page 74. And, though admittedly it doesn’t address agrobiodiversity specifically, there’s a section on increasing research investment in agriculture on page 81. I’ll take that.