The Drylands Coordination Group recently launched a new web page that offers an entry point into a whole swathe of ways in which agriculture in the Sahel can be improved. Diversification is prominent among them, and the Group says the page will be updated regularly. You can subscribe, by email, but there does not seem to be a RSS feed.
Rice stories
The BBC World Service is broadcasting a series of four programmes on the rice cultures of Asia, called Rice Bowl Tales. Starts 28 February, but if you miss it, it seems like the series has already aired on Radio National, and if you follow the link I’ve just given, you should be able to listen online or download audio files.
Training on plant genetic resources
Wageningen University in the Netherlands is holding a six-week training programme in the conservation and sustainable use of plant genetic resources. Full details are available on the Wageningen web site, and the closing date is 21 April.
Impact study with impact
Eldis Agriculture points to a report of a study: Does enhancing information flow to farmers increase rural incomes? Bottom line, it does. At least in the specific Nigerian case studied. Farmers who had taken part in an information project knew more about improved farm practices, had higher incomes, and suffered fewer sick days, although the last difference was not statistically significant. Track down the full report from Eldis.
Podcasts on Agricultural Biodiversity
One of the problems of casting your bread upon the waters with a blog like this is that we actually have no idea what you — the readers — already know about, what you want, and all that. So while some of you may respond to this item with a knowing, “Cool, podcasts, that’ll be fun” others may be thinking “Podcasts? What is he talking about”.
Rather than explain, I’ll just point you to this college’s explanation (which is both clear and useful) and say that podcasts are like internet radio for all. You download a podcast and can listen to it in one of several ways. You can also easily make your own podcasts for others to listen to, something I hope to try here before too long.
Now, to the meat of this post. Agroinnovations has a series of podcasts on agricultural biodiversity that may be interesting. I have not yet listened to any of them myself (too busy blogging about them) but the topics sound worthwhile: entomology, plant pathology, indigenous varieties, Andean crops and more.
So, if you are one of the Cool, podcasts types, and you get to them before I do, why not post a review here and let us all know what they are like?
Technorati Tags: Agricultural biodiversity, Podcast