Livestock

February 20, 2008February 24, 2008

Nibbles: Honey, seeds, bioprospecting, chocolate

Haagen Dazs understands. No bees = no honey and no fruit.
Over-excited about seeds. Jeremy comments, “It’s that time of the year”.
South Korea bioprospecting in Costa Rica.
A round-up of recent (bad) news on the chocolate front.
Namibia: no country for vegetarians.

February 17, 2008

Reflections on dog breeding

Nice pictures of livestock guardian dog breeds. And a plea for lumping.

February 16, 2008February 16, 2008

Saving local breeds, then eating them

Matthew Fort, who writes on food and drink for the Guardian newspaper in the UK, waxes lyrical about the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and its mission:

Speaking personally, on the whole I worry rather more about the survival of Boreray sheep and Marsh Daisy poultry than I do about the snow leopard or the hairy-nosed wombat, if only on the grounds that I would like the chance to eat them.

February 12, 2008February 12, 2008

Neolithic origins

The birth of Egyptian farming.

February 7, 2008

Iriomote cat threatened

Not that close a relative of the domesticated cat, but still interesting, and in trouble.

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