- Climate change ain’t going to be good for cattle.
- But will be fabulous for breeders of drought-resistant maize.
- A fifth of Africa’s freshwater plants and animals threatened. How many of these are important to local people’s nutrition and health? A lot, I bet.
- Just a couple guys, modeling the spread of maize genetic diversity in the Americas.
- Uganda turns to wild relatives for new rice varieties.
- Toward Sustainable Agricultural Systems in the 21st Century recognizes importance of agrobiodiversity. Good to know.
- New Agriculturalist revisits veg-garden-in-a-sack.
- FAO policy brief on urban agriculture.
Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Maize, Papaver somniferum, Organics, Zulu gardens, Feasts, Female farmers, Transhumance, Dogs
- Bioversity International and UNEP jointly pile on the pressure to preserve Pavlovsk …
- … as do plant professors from University of Wisonsin.
- Mexican maize farmers using CIMMYT genebank materials to adapt their varieties. Why not in Africa, then?
- High praise for a novel on opium.
- Mat Kinase takes Time to task over lacklustre organics article.
- King Goodwill Zwelithini calls for One Home One Garden campaign to support food-growing and nutrition.
- Feasts predate agriculture. Well, yeah.
- Female farmers … a bloke writes.
- Great pic on the joys of modern transhumance.
- Resurrecting the Maize King. And why not?
- More than anyone has a right to know about dogs in the ancient world.
Cloning wins, kinda
Biodiversity? We don’t need no stinkin’ biodiversity.
A cloned steer has won the same prize it (in a manner of speaking) won two years ago. At least it says something about judges’s consistency, except, of course, that they knew. Susan Schneider at the Agricultural Law blog examines the case from all angles, and comes up unhappy.
Nibbles: Biotech to the rescue, Chinese horses, Soybean carotenoids, CropMobs, Nutrition, Coffee pests, Varroa, Berries, NUS
- Genejockeys say they have sorted that global food supply problem everybody’s been so antsy about lately. No, wait, maybe it’s this.
- China has 23 indigenous horse breeds. At least.
- Latest crop to get the orange treatment is soybean.
- Diverse ways of doing agriculture: Could CropMobs go global?
- Choose foods, not nutrients. Heck, yes.
- Globally warmed beetles threatening your coffee crops? Bring on biodiversity!
- Brit breeds bees for better grooming.
- How to get the most out of your wild blueberries. Maybe we should tell Medvedev?
- Emerging Crops is a new NUS project, and it has a website.
Nibbles: CIFOR, Weeds, Camelids, Drought, Biofortification, Buckwheat
- CIFOR has a blog!
- Nice series of videos on eating weeds.
- Video on Peru’s “Andean rodeo.” You heard me.
- Africa needs drought-tolerant maize. Ok, fair enough, but here’s my question. Shouldn’t they have done this study before doing all that breeding? Oh, who knows, maybe they did.
- “Biofortification will thus remain relevant to poor rural populations in the years to come, as their incomes will still be far too low to afford a more diversified diet.” What? Who says a diversified diet need be expensive?
- Russia faces looming buckwheat crisis. At least the genetic resources are safe in the Vavilov Institute. Unless of course somebody decides to, I don’t know, build luxury villas there, or something.