Is it me or has there been a lot on the tubes about aquaponics lately? There was the thing about growing cucumbers and fish in the badlands of Alberta. And that other thing about shivering tilapia in a backyard Thunderdome in the middle of snow-bound rural Connecticut. Classes in the subject at the New Vista High School. A youtube channel. And a blog, natch. Maybe it’s time to dust off those utopian visions of urban fish farms vertically integrated with up-market sushi restaurants.
Nibbles: Cassava, fonio, apples, Salicornia, aurochs, seeds
- Nagib Nassar challenges the wisdom of GM cassava. Cultivate indigenous and wild varieties of the crop!
- Or fonio (Digitaria exilis). New paper on its diversity.
- And for dessert? Wild apple diversity?
- Need salad? How about Salicornia then?
- Nice aurochs steak to go with the salad?
- Not too soon to start planning a future harvest, if you’re in Ireland and want seeds.
Congolese cavies
I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, ever since CIAT’s ace snapper Neil Palmer posted his great shots of guinea pigs in the Congo some months back. Finally, it has, with a long post about CIAT’s project More chicken and pork in the pot, and money in the pocket: improving forages for monogastric animals with low-income farmers. You’ll notice at once that guinea pigs are neither pork nor chicken. 1 In fact, they weren’t in the original project at all. But they were in the project’s target area.
Small and easy to conceal, guinea pigs are well-suited to DRC’s conflict zones, where extreme poverty and widespread lawlessness means that the looting of larger domestic livestock is commonplace. …
“We’re not sure exactly how guinea pigs got to DRC,” said CIAT forage scientist Brigitte Maass, “but they have enormous potential to improve rural livelihoods there.”
The post goes on to explain just how guinea pigs work well in the Congo to offer people a measure of food security, and how the project scientists intend to improve that still further. Nice to be able to embrace something new midstream.
“None of the scientists had contemplated guinea pigs as an option in DRC when the project started. Now they really could turn out to be indispensable.”
Nibbles: EoL, Mixed farming, Conservation medicine, Indicators, Vitamin A, Hamburger, Rewilding, Tejate
- Did you know the Encyclopedia of Life does crop wild relatives?
- Smallholders with mixed crop and livestock systems are the key to it all. My mother-in-law says: I agree.
- Deforestation is bad for the health.
- 2010 Biodiversity Indicator Partnership launches National Biodiversity Indicators Portal.
- Aussies trial a new, secret orange spud. Yeah I can really see that being a huge success.
- The McItaly kerfuffle rumbles on. Much like your stomach after you’ve eaten one.
- The “rewilding” kerfuffle rumbles on. Much like those herds of wildebeest roaming majestically across the Great Plains.
- Rewilding an ancient pre-Hispanic drink. Ooops, I guess that should be reviving.
Nibbles: Vet, Pastoralists, Eggplant, US food map, Mexican food, Poultry, Maize, GMOs
- What’s it like being the only vet in a country? The BBC tells us.
- The CBD on how to be a good pastoralist.
- James does a mini-roundup of the India GM brinjal to-do.
- Mapping the fast food culture.
- Mexico wants Unesco to recognize culinary traditions. As if tamales were in danger of extinction. Didn’t France ask for the same last year?
- Heirloom chickens don’t taste like chicken.
- Deconstructing the cultural significance of the colour of corn.
- “GM crops: still not a panacea for poor farmers.” In other news, still no cure for cancer.