Do wander over to the latest edition of New Agriculturist, which, among other things, has a great feature giving examples of farmers adopting new crops and other ways of making a living as alternatives to illicit, environmentally damaging or otherwise inappropriate ones.
Wikiseedia: what is it?
There’s a long and detailed message from the folks at WorldChanging about something they call SeedPOD. It isn’t clear exactly what this resource will be. A sort of information exchange, but also a network for exchanging seeds and maybe too a platform for sharing experiments and results in more sustainable agriculture. As they describe it:
an imagined toolkit to keep seeds moving, farmers thriving and communities fed in the face of massive environmental change. Perhaps it will trigger some interesting thinking out there: at very least, we hope you find it briefly diverting.
All this seems to be organized through something called the Wikiseedia, but as far as I can see there is no link to this fabulous beast. Go to www.wikiseedia.com, however, and you see a bare bones installation of a wiki (a special kind of web site that anyone can contribute to and edit) that contains no content (yet?) and that has not been changed since 5 March 2007. WorldChanging’s post is dated 27 April.
There’s something happening out there. What it is ain’t exactly clear. But it will bear watching. At least, I hope it will, because it sounds really exciting.
Traditional Knowledge Newsletter
The first issue of Pachamama, the Convention on Biological Diversity’s newsletter on traditional knowledge issues, is out. I found the article on sacred sites particularly interesting. Though agricultural biodiversity is unfortunately not mentioned explicitly, the author, Erjen Khamaganova, does say that:
Preservation of sacred sites is a key way to restore traditions of a healthy way of life, healthy diet and healthy habits in forms that are unique and suitable for each region and each indigenous nation.
Blogging fruit
I’ve just come across The Fruit Blog, in which The Evil Fruit Lord discusses all things pomological (and nuts too). There’s a good set of links, and the blog has an RSS feed, which is going straight into my reader.
FRAME
Courtesy of FAO’s Non-Wood Forest Products Digest – well worth subscribing to, by the way – comes news of FRAME’s Natural Products International Workshop, and some new audio presentations that have just become available on its website. I had not heard of FRAME before. It turns out to be a “USAID-funded program to build knowledge-sharing networks of natural resource management professionals and to help NRM practitioners and decision makers to access and use the existing body of knowledge on successful NRM experiences.”