- Onions, futures, speculation and prices. Weird, and somewhat illuminating.
- New New Agriculturalist, with research, no-till, AGRA and more, much more.
Biodiversity of farms
Let’s apply the concept of biodiversity to the economics of farming. Just as we now recognize that a range of species must inhabit a given habitat for a healthy environment, a variety of farms make for a healthy farm economy. With Ventura County’s diversity of crops, there is not a day in the year that something isn’t being harvested and sent to market. Our large operations are essential to maintain a healthy population of equipment dealers and service providers. Mid-size family farmers often provide much of the leadership in local co-ops and associations. Smaller farms help sustain the agricultural service economy, and often pioneer specialty crops while feeding local markets. There is room for them all. We need them all. Our vision should embrace them all.
Nibbles: BGR, Sugarcane, Cannabis, Domestication
- Berry-go-Round 6, a plant-based blog carnival, is up. Jeremy says: “Taxonomy! Yay!“
- US uproots sugarcane, Kenya plants it. “Deciding who is right is difficult.” Er, you betcha.
- California’s largest cash crop can be an environmental disaster.
- Cassava not as nasty as its wild relatives.
Mathilda blogs cattle
I’ve been reading Mathilda37’s interesting blog about human evolution for a while now. What makes her particularly worth following from our eeyrie here at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog is that she frequently writes about domesticates too. Case in point: she’s just done a very useful roundup of DNA studies of cattle. Roundup. Cattle. Geddit?
Sound news
CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — has a new series on air called Diet for a Hungry Planet: How our World Eats. I’m busy listening to the first programme right now, and while it is pretty corny, it is also very informative. Although the focus is on Canada (and why shouldn’t it be?) the ideas being discussed are applicable everywhere. If nothing else, they’ll provoke discussion, I’m sure. Be warned, though, that if you listen direct from the browser page (as opposed to downloading a podcast version and listening to that), if you navigate away from that page the show will stop and you’ll have to go back to the beginning.