Livestock

January 20, 2008

The story of the St Bernard

There’s a stuffed St Bernard called Barry in a museum in Berne.

January 19, 2008

Cattalo complicating plans to restore Great Plains

More trouble in Naples

Brucillosis threatens mozzarella. Camorra unavailable for comment.

January 16, 2008

Feeding livestock

New Agriculturist focuses on livestock feed and fodder systems.

January 16, 2008

Archaeo-agrobiodiversity discoveries highlighted

Squash seeds and chickens feature among theÂ Top Ten discoveries of 2007, according to Archaeology Magazine. I believe we linked to both of these stories when they first appeared. The article on Polynesian breakthroughs also mentions work on pigs that we blogged about.

1. Swapping maize for indigenous crops won’t fix African food systems designed around markets and policies that still favour a narrow range of crops.
2. Cassava is both a food security fallback and a commercial crop in Uganda, but disease, climate change and declining diversity make its conservation an increasingly urgent form of insurance. But what about the markets and policies?
3. When livestock and crops fail, Ugandan pastoralists draw on wild plants for food, underlining how much food-system resilience still sits outside the formal agricultural system, with its markets and policies.
4. The Morton Arboretum is using living collections and genetic research to help the threatened butternut tree cope with changing conditions.
5. Webinar discusses global approaches to seed provenancing and transfer zones, useful for anyone who wants to move native plants without moving the wrong genes. Butternut very interested.
6. San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance’s Frozen Zoo preserves genetic material of plant and animal species that may disappear, from DNA to cells to organisms. Butternut volunteers.
7. New Indian facility combines ex situ fish conservation with community aquaculture. Good model for much of the above?
Published on October 6, 2026