Category: Information

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Pundit in the Punjab

On the Front Lines of the Global Food Crisis is the title of what promises to be a great series of posts over at Slate. I nibbled an earlier one a couple of days back, but I think this deserves more attention. The pieces are by Mira Kamdar, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute and the author of Planet India: The Turbulent Rise of the Largest Democracy and the Future of Our World. She’s touring India, and the third and latest in her despatches from the front lines is from Ludhiana in the Punjab:

If a single institution can take credit for bringing the Green Revolution to Punjab, it is Punjab Agricultural University.

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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.

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Nibbles: Economics, Agricultural origins, Slow Food, Pollinators, India