Livestock

January 5, 2008January 5, 2008

Agriculture illuminates Art illuminates Agriculture

Artists do the darndest things. From WorldChanging, a report on several art projects that involve agriculture as their theme. I was particularly intrigued by three of them. The Acorn Pig asks how long a region famed for its bacon can live on its laurels. Milk maps the movements of links along the chain that turns milk into cheese. And F.R.U.I.T. uses fruit to open the eyes of urban consumers. Each is great fun and a fine time waster, if that’s what you need. But each also has serious points to make about the nature of agriculture and eating today. I just wish artists would do their art and leave writers to write; things might be a lot easier to comprehend.

December 18, 2007

Hamming it up

Jamon iberico finally gets a visa.

December 17, 2007December 17, 2007

Canadian fish in trouble

Two separate pieces in EurekAlert in the past couple of days point to something being decidedly rotten in the state of Canadian fisheries. First, evidence that parasitic sea lice from salmon farms are spreading to nearby wild populations and may wipe them out within a few years. ((Can anyone think of a similar thing happening with a crop and its wild relatives? I can’t.)) And the historic American eel fishery is also in trouble, possibly as a result of pollution in Lake Ontario. Bad luck, or something more?

December 16, 2007

Biblical transportation makes a comeback

~~Asses~~ Donkeys and mules stillÂ big in Gaza.

December 11, 2007

New film about pastoralists and biodiversity

Keepers of Genes, a 28-minute documentary produced by award-winning filmmaker Moving Images, documents the role played by pastoralists in preserving animal biodiversity and the key issues confronting them today.

Anyone seen it? Anyone know more?

Fresh Nibbles

What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
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?
Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
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.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
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.
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.
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.
I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…

Published on April 4, 2025