- Vanilla domestication 101.
- Bhutan ponders biodiversity database. We say: Don’t forget the crops, people.
- “Crap crops of the Incas.” One man’s on-off relationship with oca.
Satoyama: Japan’s Secret Water Garden. A different approach to rice.
Seed Systems and Agrobiodiversity: The Book
The Dutch ambassador to Ethiopia in his opening speech stressed that a well functioning seed system is crucial for improving food security, increasing agricultural export, and conserving agrobiodiversity.
That’s one enlightened ambassador. He was launching a book, which you can download in its entirety: Farmers, seeds and varieties. Supporting informal seed supply in Ethiopia, edited by Thijssen, M.H., Zewdie Bishaw, Abdurahman Beshir, Walter S. de Boef.
Berry-Go-Round #13
A very sad Berry-Go-Round is up at Watching the World Wake Up. Anyway, if you’ve landed here from there, welcome.
Online platform comes up short on agrobiodiversity
Via LEISA’s Farm comes news of INFONET-BioVision,
…an online information platform tailored to the rural population in East Africa. It offers information on sustainable agriculture and ecological control of plant-, human- and animal- targeting pests and disease vectors.
Leave aside for a moment the unlikelihood of many rural people in East Africa being able to access such a platform. ((Perhaps extension workers will be the main audience?)) It does have a great deal of useful information on the agronomy of a large number of crops, including neglected ones, focusing on pest and disease control strategies. But there’s not as much as one might have hoped on the value of diversity. Although, for example, there’s a list of a few local and improved cultivars in the cassava section, I didn’t get the sense of genetic diversity management as a legitimate strategy for sustainability. On a par with “conservation tillage,” say. Pity.
Nibbles: SPIN, Oxford Symposium, GMO, Chinese food, Bees
- SPIN — an intensive system of farming — has branched out into gardening for food.
- Oxford boffins discuss food. Interminably. Every year. Jeremy says: I was there!
- Slate bends over backwards to think of ways GMOs can be good for you.
- Open source food. Great concept, great talk.
- Feral and native bees could take up the slack caused by Colony Collapse Disorder.