Livestock

Nibbles: Land lease, Maasai flexibility, Small farms, Coffee, coffee, coffee, Climate change, Sahelian trees, Food as drugs, Field genebanks, Chinese medicinals, Bolivian NTFP, Invasives

Dinka men despise manual labour, hence “southern Sudan might soon be on the block for having a lot of its potential farm land leased to, and worked by, foreigners”.
Maasai, on the other hand, “diversifying into cropping, by keeping fewer and faster growing animals and … taking on paying jobs”. Takes all sorts.
What is a small farm? Depends.
Coffee contains insecticides. Who knew?
Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative (GCQRI) launched.
Central America’s coffee lands to shrink under climate change, Reuters reports. Enough! I’ve got the shakes.
Africa, meanwhile, needs technological innovations to cope.
Domesticating baobab. You know it makes sense.
Take two snacks in the morning and call me if you don’t feel any better.
Climate change will affect Portuguese ex situ plant conservation sites too.
“How best can communities conserve their medicinal plants?” A case study from China.
Bolivia could make more of its Araceae and Bromeliaceae. Couldn’t we all?
Are protected areas in Africa harbouring crop wild relatives? Just kidding: it’s invasives IUCN is talking about.

Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?

There are some African success stories, and a few even have to do with agriculture.
TILLING tef.
Some farmers’ groups in Asia don’t like hybrid rice. But some do, presumably. How come we never hear from those?
Livestock trends deconstructed.
The mother of all grapevine varieties found. Well, some varieties anyway.
One of the foremost supporters of the System of Rice Intensification interviewed.
Scientia Pro Publica, latest edition. There’s some nutrition stuff.

Breeders called on to save key Afghani crop. No, not really.
GMOs not incompatible with organic, round 2.
The Columbian Exchange. People though, not crops.
USDA chief botanist was into Cannabis shock.
Novel way of growing rice unveiled.
Two livestock pdfs: What 2010 means for farm animal genetic resources conservation. And a book on European local breeds.

Professor said meat should be properly priced to avoid disaster. Why just meat?
“The Seed Makers Who Don’t Pray for Rain.” Slick, but do they actually pray for drought?
Found the above here, but is GMO drought resistance really “very important stuff to making farming sustainable”?
Kenyan farmers grow mushrooms. Fun, guys.
Does Africa need better product branding?
Public Aid, Philanthropy, and the Privatization of African Agricultural Development. I confess, I didn’t understand most of it.
Rhizowen invents the artichon. Who says there’s no new food to be discovered?
Kew celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Pollinators get a look-in.
Rome celebrates International Year of Biodiversity. Agriculture prominent.
IUCN celebrates Allium pskemense: edible, medicinal, a crop wild relative, and threatened.
World record plate of hummus, 10,452 kg of tasty serotonin.
Local man sends USDA a fig they didn’t have in their genebank.