Farmer field schools are growing in popularity, as a way for farmers and technocrats alike to learn what works and why in real life. From The Rodale Institute, one of the foremost organic organizations in the United States, comes a lengthy feature article about how things operate in Burkina Faso. Relentlessly upbeat, it gives the low-down on the individual farmers who make farmer field schools such a success. An excellent read.
Biotechnology annual report available
The biotech industry’s annual pat-on-the-back report is available from ISAAA.
Hot peppers celebrated
Damn, I missed the Peperoncino Festival!
Live to eat
Learn about culinary tourism.
Gardening by stealth
Here’s an intriguing idea: guerrilla gardening, “gardening in public urban spaces with or without permission.” It includes
fly-by-night plantings in urban wastelands, lobbing “seed grenades” into fenced-off empty lots, planting trees in the middle of nowhere, covering traffic circles with native ground cover, sowing edible plants in school-yards, draping lamp posts with decorative creepers, developing community gardens and empowering disaffected youth by reintroducing them to the joys of dirtying one’s hands in the soil.
It’s all described in the book Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, by David Tracey, which has been getting some good reviews. We’ve blogged before about the many benefits of school food gardens. They’re great ways of teaching kids about agrobiodiversity, as well as providing healthy, nutritious food for their snacks. We just recently passed the point where 50% of the world’s population lives in cities. I imagine we’ll become increasingly familiar with — and thankful for — the activities of urban guerrilla gardeners.