- No rice? Eat bananas!
- “Whatever the cultivation and consumption of cassava mean to us as Jamaicans, it cannot be just a source of comic relief.”
- Climate change good for coconuts. Well that’s a relief.
- Spud slide show.
- Gubernator helps Chile with its genetic resources. Sarah Connor unavailable for comment.
- Galliformes conservation in SE Asia. No, nothing to do with the French.
- “…the white part of the leek must represent at least one-third of the total length or half the sheathed part.” Yeah, that makes sense.
- “You really see that it’s the poor and persecuted who have been the seed savers.”
Nibbles: Biofuels, Prices, Biofuels again, Wolf, Mushrooms
- Wanna laff? Ag Leaders Challenge Ethanol Myths.
- Whisper it; the market works. Rice futures tumble, again.
- “Some biofuels might do more harm than good to the environment, study finds”. Alert the media! Oh, they already did.
- “Graphing Jane Austen” approach suggests wolf taught man to hunt. Little Red Riding Hood unavailable for comment.
- India’s Mushroom City.
Breeding clubs
As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.
They shoot horses, don’t they?
Ok, that’s just a provocative way of introducing an interesting review in Trends in Ecology and Evolution describing how harvesting from animal populations can affect their genetic make-up. ((Fred W. Allendorf, Phillip R. England, Gordon Luikart, Peter A. Ritchie, Nils Ryman (2008) Genetic effects of harvest on wild animal populations. Trends in Ecology & Evolution. Volume 23(6):327-337.)) The following three types of genetic change are highlighted:
- strengthening or collapse of population structure
- genetic erosion
- selection
The take-home message is that management plans should recognize that harvesting changes not just the demography but also the genetics of populations. Very important for sustainable management of fisheries etc., but I bring it up here because it got me thinking: are any wild relatives of livestock exploited through harvesting? Things like these cute pigs, for example. And would the conclusions be very different for plants?
Nibbles: Global Food, Aid, Nettles, Women, Aquaculture, Education
- Remember those photos of global families’ food? The creators answer questions.
- Speaking of funding, an analysis of aid for agriculture published January 2008.
- CABI blogger pushes Nettle Awareness Week. Quite right too.
- “The men don’t know how to sell, they’ll give up the potatoes for next to nothing.“
- Vietnamese pangassius farmers up in arms. Yeah I never heard of it either, but I’ll be looking for it in the market out of solidarity .
- How to involve children in gardening.