- Advice to the G20: “hunger is neither the result of demographic problems nor just the result of a mismatch between supply and demand”.
- Let there be chickens! Picture goodness from National Geographic.
- How to cook yucca flowers. And eat them, obviously.
National Geographic does genebanks
This is the beguiling paradox of seeds. They are, for all their obvious significance, so readily dismissible, especially by those of us in the well-fed world, who have forgotten where our food even comes from.
Let us hope this National Geographic article helps to change things.
Nibbles: Cattle affected, Conservation, Wildfires, Grains, Sudan’s PGR, Sunflowers
- Rare breed of cattle affected by climate change.
- MoBot to host conference on Global Plant Conservation Strategy, 5-7 July 2011
- Russian wildfires expected to be worse this year. What price wheat?
- GOOD gets its head around the meaning of “grain”. As in “15-grain bread in supermarkets”.
- Sudan Agricultural Research Corporation’s Plant Genetic Resources Programme popped up in my Reader. No idea why.
- Uganda’s farmers discover the value of sunflowers.
Nibbles: Millet, Goat, Heirloom Veg, Tamarind, Rice domestication, Rice sustainability, Microbes, Competition
- The importance of multi-purpose crops in Africa.
- The importance of multi-purpose goats, everywhere.
- Target reader reviews The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables.
- Tamarind charcoal loses out to tamarind drink, Malawian villagers rejoice.
- Has intellectual piracy been with us since humans first became engaged in agricultural production? AoB blog asks the tough ones.
- Land-use intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems launched. Glad they have an acronym.
- Microbe diversity matters too.
- OK, so nobody nominated us, but the semi-finalists at the 3QD science writing competition have been announced.
Andean products on display
The Fifth Potato Festival is underway in the Surco district of Lima, Peru. It sounds like fun, but all the information about it online at the moment is in Spanish only. If you don’t read the language, and can’t be bothered fighting with the results of Google Translate, you can read a short piece on last year’s event in English. It’s actually about much more than just the potato. There are stands on a whole range of new Andean products:
…black quinoa, royal quinoa, red quinoa, quinoa sajama, maca, instant amaranth, instant cañihua, wheat, red corn, corn chullpi, bean mashco, barley mashco, black potato, white potato flour, etc.