- “Nilotic-language speakers … first brought herds of animals to southern Africa before the Bantu migration” about 2000 years ago.
- British truffles go berserk. And more.
- An interview with the guy who’s been mapping hundreds of Malagasy species.
- Not sure if I already drew your attention to the New Agriculturist’s Focus feature on A Green Revolution for Africa.
Paean to singular agricultures
A puff piece in EurekAlert alerted me to what looks to be a very interesting book about the wonderful world of traditional agriculture:
These forms of agriculture are often highly idiosyncratic and take up only a tiny portion of the Earth’s total cultivated surface. Yet they stand out owing to their ability to adapt to a constantly changing natural environment and to the diversity of farming practices they adopt.
Problem is, no details on the book are given: no title, no authors. Fortunately, this led me to the original IRD release, in French. Which led me to the book itself, though again details on the book are at a premium, I must say.
Nibbles: Economics, Agricultural origins, Slow Food, Pollinators, India
- An economist designs a sustainable agricultural system. Good news: it includes genebanks, if only as an additional thought.
- Peruvian rock art marks transition between hunting/gathering and agriculture.
- A food garden on the White House lawn? Via Slow Food Nation, get your tickets quick. And follow the blog. Thanks, Colinski, and have a good time there.
- “The total economic value of pollination worldwide amounted to €153 billion, which represented 9.5% of the value of the world agricultural production used for human food in 2005.”
- “I want the farmers to get the message that what we are doing, what they will be doing when they embrace natural farming, is revolutionary.”
Plant Breeding Electronic Journal Club launched
Just in from GBIP.
The GIPB Knowledge Resource Center is launching the Plant Breeding Electronic Journal Club, a virtual place that allows communities to meet and critically evaluate plant breeding and related fields’ articles in the scientific literature.
This e-Journal Club is directed to professionals and students interested in discussing relevant plant breeding themes and issues.  Its majors objectives are to help improve skills of understanding and debating current topics of interest to plant breeding and to promote intellectually stimulating and professionally rewarding exchange with colleagues from around the world.
This e-Journal Club will use Fireboard, a forum component fully integrated to the GIPB website, which allows implementation of many e-Journal Club groups simultaneously. Dr. Fred Bliss kindly agreed to serve as the convener of this first GIPB e-Journal Club, which will discuss the article “Quantitative Genetics, Genomics, and the Future of Plant Breeding†by Dr. Bruce Walsh.
In order to participate you just need to follow the instructions in the front page of the GIPB website. Registration is now opened and the e-Journal Club will start on Wednesday, 6 August 2008.
Please, note that discussion in this first e-Journal Club will be held in English, but proposals of conveners willing to start e-Journal Clubs in other languages can be sent to gipb@fao.org.
Nibbles: Qat, Tomato, Climate change squared, Documentation, Food diaspora, Mapping Africa, Gout, Chicken origins, HealthMap, Olive, Crop mixtures
- Catha edulis bad for Yemen economy. Having been waved a gun at by a qat-chewing Somali teenager, I can testify it’s bad for other things as well.
- Amy Goldman on the heirloom tomato.
- Biology Letters special feature on climate change and biodiversity.
- And more on climate change, this time its likely effect on livelihoods.
- All you ever wanted to know about plant genetic resources conservation in Germany.
- “Isn’t it crazy to think that everything we eat or use that comes from plants at one time grew completely wild?” Well, not so much.
- Africa: Atlas of Our Changing Environment. (Watch out, very large file.)
- Another reason not to drink sugary soft drinks: gout. Coconut water anyone?
- Pre-Columbian Chilean chickens could have come from anywhere, not just Polynesia.
- Mapping diseases.
- A 12th century olive genebank in Morocco.
- Traditional Ethiopian barley/wheat mixtures (hanfets) have some advantages over pure stands.