Category: Mainstream

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Mini-cows a hit in the recession

I just can’t resist stories about miniature livestock. Despite the fact that we’re still getting 250 hits a week from people looking for the pocket pigs we mentioned in a one-line throwaway post two years ago. Or maybe because of that. But it is a serious thing:

…miniature Herefords consume about half that of a full-sized cow yet produce 50% to 75% of the rib-eyes and fillets, according to researchers and budget-conscious farmers.

Which all reminds me of the dwarf cattle I saw on Socotra some years back. I wonder if anything is being done with them. And with what I suppose must be their relatives in the Dhofar region of southern Oman. I can’t imagine they’ll long survive the rapid development that seems to be going on in both places.

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Bedbugs redux

Caveman Forecaster is a blog about “the art and science of time series analysis and forecasting.” There was a post about a month ago about bedbugs that really piqued my interest. It seems that bedbugs (Cimex lectularius) were virtually eradicated in the US fifty years ago, but are making a comeback. That has even led to the organization of a National Bedbug Summit, which took place last month. The post was mostly about using Google search data to monitor and predict the seasonal outbreaks and longer-term trends. But it got me looking into the reasons for the resurgence, and wikipedia has a reasonable summary of that, with plenty of references. Basically, genetic diversity studies suggest that there was never complete eradication, but that the pesticide-resistant populations moved to alternate hosts, “have slowly been propagating in poultry facilities, and have made their way back to human hosts via the poultry workers.” So here’s another example of a human pest which can also hang out with agrobiodiversity, and jump back and forth.

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Visualizing agrobiodiversity in markets

I’ve just come across two Flickr groups which are intensely interesting from an agrobiodiversity perspective. Flickr is a photo sharing site, and I have in fact blogged about it before here, for example on how it could be used to map crop diversity. The two groups bring together photos taken in markets, with a lot of fruits and vegetables featured. As with my previous post on tomatoes, have a look at the mapping option in particular. A great time-waster, but I bet it could be used to look at geographic patterns in vegetable diversity in markets.

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So much, much more than a weed

According to self-described “cultivator” David Randall in The Independent, it’s going to be a bumper year for dandelions in the UK.

Yet not everyone is clapping their hands with glee. According to reports in less ecologically sensitive newspapers, keen gardeners and lawn obsessives see dandelions as trouble, blemishes to their idea of contrived perfection, the removal of whose deep taproots can rick the sturdiest of backs. To them, dandelions are the enemy, insurgent forces of nature, forever pushing aside the “real” garden flowers, and taking over. They are thus condemned, in that most loaded of horticultural terms, as “weeds”.

This word, to those of us who have been gardening with dandelions for years, is not only wrong, but hurtful. Taraxacum officinale, as we cultivators call it, is a much undervalued addition to any plot. Not only do its golden rosettes brighten the dingiest corner, but you can use it to construct a salad, make an acceptable table wine, or even, when it runs to seed, tell the time. And you can’t say that about all those bloody purple alliums of which Chelsea’s show gardeners are so fond.

Quite right. Dandelions have a long history of use in medicine, yes, but also food. Although they do take some preparation. And of course there’s wine too. All this, plus an interesting taxonomy, and an endangered endemic relative. What more can you ask for? Weed indeed.