- Looks interesting: Assessing the impact of rural policy on biodiversity: High Nature Value Farming in Italy. Next Thursday.
- Gates Foundation’s Sylvia Mathews Burwell says Fortify Lives with agriculture and Nutrition. In full.
- Ugandans! Grow sorghum, get a scholarship for your child. Win-win. Cheers, Nile Breweries.
- Australian farmer tells all about Svalbard.
- ILRI speaks about climate change, livestock and plagues — The Economist listens. Respect!
Herdwick sheep pass viability test
Embryos and sperm collected almost 10 years ago at the height of the Foot and Mouth epidemic in the UK have proved viable, according to a report from the UK’s Channel 4 News. Five ewes are carrying lambs fathered by rams lost to foot and mouth disease, and another three are surrogate mothers to embryos taken from sheep culled during the epidemic.
The threat to Herdwicks, one of several hardy heritage sheep breeds particularly valued for crossbred animals, prompted a rescue mission and resulted in the formation of The Sheep Trust. The report points out that in the end the precautions weren’t necessary — only about a third of the Herdwick flock was culled — but that it was impossible to know that in advance.
The Sheep Trust has taken on 12 heritage breeds, and calculates that 10 of those are geographically very concentrated, with 95% of the animals within 65 km of the centre of the breed’s distribution. This, the Trust warns, makes them vulnerable to future outbreaks of disease.
Nibbles: Taro, Organics, Chickens, Cuba, Fishfood,
- How to build a taro garden; the straight dope from Queen Emma (1836-1885).
- Organic agriculture in Kibera, Kenya; the straight dope from the BBC (slideshow)
- Chinese chicken merchants undercut locals; welcome to the market, Zambia.
- UN to preserve Cuban agrobiodiversity? Who knows, no straight dope to be had.
- Research proves new soybean meal sources are good fish meal alternatives. So that’s alright then.
Nibbles: Apples, Agave, Argentina, Araucanas, Egypt, Agro Pastorale, Add-on benefits, Oil Palm
- Dave’s Garden does the apple forests of Almaty.
- Agave nectar sweetens the prospects of Otomi women in Mexico.
- Rhizowen investigates silverweed while taxonomists slug it out: Potentilla anserina or Argentina anserina?
- Just what the urban poultryperson needs: a hotel for chickens.
- National Gene Bank of Egypt website untouched.
- A diplomat visit’s Cameroon’s Cornice Agro Pastorale, and is impressed.
- Tackling climate change benefits health … and vice versa.
- Almost certainly more than you needed to know about Palm Oil palm.
Nibbles: CBNRM, Extension, Seed systems, Climate change book and conferences, Cassava, Endophytes, Old Irish Goats, Plant Cuttings, Ethnobotany, Weeds
- Designing the next generation of community-based natural resource management projects. No agriculture. Weird. Well, not so much actually.
- Extension systems have a website! Yeah but do they need one?
- Informal seed system working just fine in Indian Himalayas. So maybe the extension system is not needed? But, hey, they have a website, did I mention that?
- Climate Change and Crop Production: The Book. And: The Conference. No but wait, here’s another.
- The unusual crop that is cassava.Yeah, but in The Economist?
- ” …among the largest collections of endophytes…” Not a lot of people know that.
- Old Irish goats (and others, to be fair) meet to talk about, well, Old Irish goats.
- The great Plant Cuttings.
- How to design an ethnobotanical garden. Would coca find a place?
- Musings on the evolution of weeds.