Livestock

October 7, 2008October 7, 2008

Nibbles: Cacao, Pamphlets, Breadfruit, Goats, Milk, Economic drivers, Truffles

Cacao comes inÂ 10 “flavours”, not just 3.
PDFs of pamphlets on different aspects of agricultural biodiversity from FAO.
Diane Ragone interviewed on breadfruit.
Something for the weekend, Mr Goat?
Got yak milk?
High livestock prices mean lots of livestock on the land means low biodiversity on farmland. Here comes the science.
NatGeo video on the trouble with truffles.

October 4, 2008

Nibbles: Meat, Meet

Visayan warty piglet eaten. Python blamed.
Biodiversity and Agricultures: Todayâ€™s Challenges, Tomorrowâ€™s Research for More Sustainable Farmingâ€. Can’t wait for November 5th.

October 3, 2008October 3, 2008

Nibbles: Heirlooms, Seed, Ethnic cuisine, Meat, Sheep

“The ‘Heirloom Tomato Salad’ was made with a mix of Sweet 100 and Sungold tomatoes — both of which are hybrid varieties.”
FARMER’S NOTEBOOK: The importance of preserving native seed varieties.
Increasing culinary diversity in the US.
Eat a kangaroo and save the planet. No? How about moose then? You can have too much culinary diversity, perhaps.
Climate change: the silver lining.

October 2, 2008October 2, 2008

Nibbles: Polyploids, Testicular cooking, Genes, Mongoose, Pears

Parade of Polyploids! I know, but that’s what it says on the site.
Balls.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant: The Joy of Genes … Illustrated. Teachers, use it!
How mongooses got to Spain.
Pears that look like apples.

September 29, 2008September 29, 2008

Nibbles: Tamarind, Fire, Aquaculture

A single tree that is also a genebank? Holy tamarind.
Looking to kangaroo bones for evidence of Aboriginal terraforming.
African fish farming links. Via.

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025