Livestock

Nibbles: Quinoa, Millet, Prize, Agroforestry, Herdwick sheep, Plant breeding, Potato breeding book, Taro varieties, Hot chocolate, Spices

Oh no! Super-writer Bittman condemns yet more Bolivian farmers to destitution with yummy quinoa recipes.
Can Geoff Tansey help the poor millet farmers of the Deccan Plateau to avoid that fate?
Maybe he should enter that millet “initative” for The Equator Prize.
We’re deafened by the buzz in advance of the World Congress on Agroforestry.
For example, better nutrition associated with trees in urban environments and rural tree cover.
Today’s genome of passing interest: Herdwick sheep. They’re primitive, y’know.
Realfood.org – a name to strike apparently undeserved fear into the hearts of the cynical – offers an encomium to conventional modern plant breeding.
Which is apparently a lost art, at least as regards potatoes.
But not taro, if latest news from Pacific is to be believed. Ignore the title, BTW.
How they made hot chocolate in the olden days, the really olden days.
Another stunner from the Botanist in the Kitchen: Spices and phylogeny.

Today’s genome of passing interest, the water buffalo, less than two years after it was promised.
Saluting the true amateurs, on bean and tuberous diversity.
Unconsidered benefits of capture fisheries — except for the captured fish, I suppose.
Eleven months early, AoBblog links to a new paper on how to best to tap frankincense.
Not to be outdone, Modern Farmer relates how maple syrup could be industrialised as a row crop. H/t Metafilter.
An e-learning course on Gender in Agriculture.
Which is unlikely to please Ed Carr, author of Gender and adaptation: Time to do it differently.
US inventories its crop wild relatives.
Demand for cropland will increase.
Which is bad for forests, which are good for food security, but not as much as they could be.

Agriculture in Vietnam: rice down, coffee up. I wonder if the two may be related?
Interactive online atlas of sacred lands.
The Allium takes a pot shot at the gene jockeys.
“It’s all about convincing people to take the first bite.” Oh, and the second.
But will insects feature in this professional short course on nutrition from IDS?
SE Asian rainforest as managed as the Amazon?
Prof. Sen’s poverty lecture at LSE.

The need for seed.
If you need to know about the conservation of animal genetic resources in India, this hour-long video may be just what you’re looking for.
Reconstructing Mesoamerican chocolate.
Re-imagining West African cooking.
ICRISAT finds 6 cool chickpea varieties in its genebank. No word on who lost them in the first place.

The taxonomy of cow farts. Can’t improve on that title.
What the hell is Hawaiian Plantain, and why is it needed in Panama?
Ever eat a sedge?
Bet they could do with some pepper.
Ancient Japanese rice found. Let the DNA extraction begin.
Indian farmers can now claim royalties on traditional varieties. What could possibly go wrong?
How about paying them to preserve “traditional and fast disappearing millets“?
Video on CIFOR’s greatest successes. I think the greatest failures would be more instructive.
Self-consciously cool (but don’t let put you off) podcast on the domestication of the dog.
The evolution of human lactose persistence, however, is not all about calcium.
Today’s theory about honeybee deaths is sure to be discussed at today’s honeybee health summit.
Can participatory mapping save the commons? Probably not, but fun nevertheless.
Fun? How about the successful defence of a thesis on “The social structure of cultivated plants: the influence of exchanges, representations and practices on sorghum diversity in Mount Kenya’s people”.
Keep calm and eat kangkung. Don’t you love it when one meme eats another?
Say you want an African Green Revolution Forum … Well, you know, go to Maputo.