Mainstream

Nibbles: Declaration, Students, Grasslands, Organic rice

Fine words from Cordoba: Promising Crops for the XXI Century. Get ’em here.
Got a horticultural problem facing local farmers? Need a US graduate student? Let the Horticulture CRSP Trellis Fund be your matchmaker.
Why conserve grasslands when you could be chasing quick profits in corn and soy?
Texas A&M gets $1M to study organic rice. Would $1million fund side-by-side trials of SRI, organic and paddy?

Today’s new national genebank for food security? Step proudly forward, Rwanda!
Bolivians are eating three times more quinoa. Or maybe three times more Bolivians are eating quinoa.
Growing history in a pre-Columbian English cottage garden.
Bland tomatoes all down to the lack of volatiles.
Daily Kos spreads the Guardian’s gospel of SRI rice; so is aerobic rice a step down that path?
Speaking of which, those Bihari farmers have snagged a world record potato harvest, using organic methods, and a relatively new variety from Indian breeders.

Bigshots visit CIMMYT, miss opportunity to mention genebank. No, wait…
Bigshot visits IRRI, including genebank.
Yeah but who needs those anyway, you can make your own!
Now the French want their say on quinoa.
Speaking of the French, you think there is any horsemeat in Cornish pasties?
“I grew up with zucchini, but I prefer the flavor and texture of angled luffa.”
Gotta love the fact that there’s a thing called the Rogue Creamery.
Missed the fact that Leafsnap had been named one of the top 10 science apps of 2012.
Germans report on Italians helping Ethiopians. To keep bees. One suspects Ethiopians could teach Italians and Germans a thing or two about keeping bees, but that’s another story.

If you love water, here are 35 ways to save it. Part 1 and Part 2, 3 & 4 to come.
I love the idea of tattooed apples.
How can you not love low-arsenic rice varieties from Bangladesh? Maybe because they might be opening a hornets’ nest.
The video camera loves farmers, and the feeling’s mutual. Extension is ready for its close-up.
It’s a short step from over-exploitation to domestication. Lovely news for …
… Malagasy farmers, who could love their wild yams to death. Good thing they’re nuts for cultivated yams.
Darwinian Agriculture embraces a well-argued contrary view, even though Ford doesn’t necessarily agree.
I like the idea of an online almanac for local climate change observations, but I’d love it even more if it went global.
The ever-contrary Matt Ridley is happy to reaffirm his love for intensive agriculture because “with cheap light, an urban, multi-story hydroponic warehouse the size of Delaware could feed the world, leaving the rest for wilderness”.
Gene Logsdon would love to see this headline: “Monsanto retreating before invading pigweed hordes.” Dream on, Gene.
And what would today be without chocolate? I love that things are never as simple as they seem, even in the realm of Theobroma cacao.

Today’s genomic breakthrough involves kernel number in maize.
Neolithic people overhunted, then thought better of it.
Was guinea fowl ever domesticated, I wonder?
How to figure out if you’ve looked hard enough. For plants, that is. And some discussion.
Gin is in trouble. But help is at hand.
A workshop on chocolate and vanilla. My kinda event. And chocolate does need help. Gin, chocolate. Pretty soon life wont be worth living.
Simran Sethi’s Twitter chat after TEDxManhattan was storified, but it’s gone now of course. Try this instead.
Final say on that IPBES-1 gabfest.
And the first say on that “Global Consultation on agricultural biodiversity for sustainable food security” thing.