Nibbles: Agroforestry, Forecasts, Coffee, Pigs, GIS, Potatoes

BBC’s Farm Swap is online

That BBC radio documentary about farmers trying to learn from each other is out at last.

In Farm Swap, Mike Gallagher meets two farmers who are working outside their own countries.

They are both prepared to experience a new environment but for very different reasons.

You can listen online or download a podcast.

In part one Pedro, an idealistic young Ecuadorian farmer, visits Hawaii…

During his 4 month visit to Hawaii, Pedro visits a coffee plantation and learns how to encourage sustainable agriculture.

But as well as discovering new farming techniques and sharing experiences to take back to Ecuador, what can Pedro teach Hawaiian farmers in return?

As I said before, I think farmer-to-farmer exchanges are potentially a great way to learn. I’ll be tuning in.

Cats and dogs and maize: A Darwinian view

The Rough Guide To Evolution lists the entire content (with linky goodness) of the current early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences of the USA. As Mark Pallen notes, it “is chock full of articles on evolution from a recent colloquium”. Two that we’ll be reading over the weekend are:

  1. From wild animals to domestic pets, an evolutionary view of domestication, and
  2. Tracking footprints of maize domestication and evidence for a massive selective sweep on chromosome 10.

Who says we don’t know how to have fun round here?