- What’s the difference between pluots and plumcots? By the guy who wrote the book.
- ACIAR publication on village chickens, and another. Thanks, DAD-Net.
- Modeling the axolotl, the edible Mexican salamander, before it’s too late.
- Artisanal fishing data. Via.
- USDA looking to expand its fruit collection to cope with climate change. NOt the only ones, I imagine.
- Danes stamp on allotments. No, wait. Allotments on Danish stamps.
- Aussies find genetic marker for hornless cattle that will jump on barbie by themselves.
- Breeding better Artemisia annua.
- The diversity of farmer-managed aquatic systems in SE Asia.
- 15% of angiosperm speciation events are accompanied by ploidy increase. Much more in domesticated species, I bet.
Nibbles: Gardening, Maple syrup, Farming and conservation, Late blight, Urban guerrilla, Bizarre produce, Russian food, Aquaculture, Heirloom apples, Turkish medicinal plants, Bee-eating hornets
- NY Botanical Garden launches summer Edible Garden celebration.
- Thingy for getting more syrup out of maples invented.
- Farmer floods his fields on purpose.
- Insights into tomato late-blight resistance. Do try and keep up!
- A very English guerrilla gardener.
- Pictures of weird fruits and vegetables.
- Russian starters. Uhm, I spot a trend.
- The future of aquaculture: giant robotic roaming cages.
- Saving California’s Sebastopol Gravenstein apple.
- “Zeytinburnu Medicinal Plant Garden, opened in 2005, is Turkey’s first and only medicinal plant garden.”
- Something else has it in for bees: Chinese hornets.
Nibbles: Tofu, Pluon, Community gardens, Indian drought, Trees, Chicks, rare breeds
- Tofu, anyone?
- Plumcot, anyone?
- Guerrilla gardening, everyone!
- Green Revolution breadbasket drying up. ICRISAT has the answer. Well, sort of.
- BBC has a different answer. Trees can keep people alive in times of drought.
- More semi-naked chicks, this time in South Africa.
- Naked or otherwise, eat them to save them, with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy.
Nibbles: Organocontroversy, Small farms, Organic can feed world, Cashmere
- Are Organic Veggies Better for You? Maybe, or maybe not. Either way, it’s a useless debate. Yay!
- Agroecology, Small Farms, and Food Sovereignty. Yay!
- “Study after study show that organic techniques can provide much more food per acre in developing countries than conventional chemical-based agriculture.” Define organic.
- Fashionistas driving desertification in Mongolia.
The latest on the results of the Egyptian pig cull
The BBC has done a follow-up to the story of the Egyptian pig cull. It’s been a disaster for many. Here’s one of the rubbish collectors — zabaleen — who were Cairo’s pig keepers:
I sold pigs twice a year. To pay for mending the car and the school fees for our three young children. There is no way I can replace that income.
There have also been health consequences, especially for children, and some people blame a rat infestation on the accumulating garbage that used to be fed to the pigs.
The government says farmers can restock – but only if the pigs are reared in a more modern farming environment on the outskirts of the city: where pigs are kept in isolation, where they can be slaughtered in a proper way and the meat cooled ready for market.
But the zabaleen say they cannot afford that.