The latest Tangled Bank (a blog carnival all about science) is up ((So, welcome anyone who arrived from there.)) with a couple of posts of potential interest to agriculture. Walking the Berkshires describes how to rationally decide how invasive a weed might be. And if you’re interested in pests and diseases, Discovering Biology in a Digital World will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about the screwworm, one of my personal all-time favourites.
Prof. Jack Hawkes
Prof. Jack Hawkes, a pioneer and a giant of the science — and practice — of plant genetic resources conservation and use, is dead at 92.
International Kitchen Garden Day
Did you know there’s an International Kitchen Garden Day on the fourth Sunday of August each year? Neither did I, but it’s a good way of celebrating agrobiodiversity, isn’t it? Anyway, I got to hear about it via a wiki on Sustainable Community Action that Danny has just blogged about over at Rurality.
Danny goes solo
You may remember some of Danny Hunter’s excellent contributions to this blog, for example his take on the importance of mentoring in helping to enhance scientific research capacity in developing countries. He also recently kicked off a fascinating discussion on the worldwide distribution of the practice of floating-bed cultivation.
Well, no doubt inspired by our example, Danny’s got a brand new blog of his own now. It’s called Rurality, and its mission is to:
collect and share information relevant to rural development in an Irish context by exploring commonalities between global and local experiences and practices. By generating discussion and debate, it hopes to construct information that will be accessible in one place, and of value, to people with an interest in rural living.
Do check it out, it’s really great. We’ve added Rurality to our blogroll, and we’ll be visiting Danny regularly for his thoughts on agrobiodiversity.
Animal genetic resources conference
The First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture is on at Interlaken, Switzerland. Earth Negotiations Bulletin is providing daily reports. The first official press release is also out. Are you there? Would you like to tell us what is going on? Drop us a line.