Masanobu Fukuoka, the author of The One Straw Revolution, and a pioneer of “natural” or no-till farming, has passed away at 95.
Cow Parade
There was an article in the local paper on Saturday which described how some of the exhibits at the recent Cow Parade in San Jose were a bit worse for wear and were being repaired. Well, I’d never heard of Cow Parade, but it sounds like fun. You can check out the entries for the San Jose event online. I just wish there was more phenotypic diversity on show, all the entries in the Wikipedia article look like basically the same breed.
Nibbles for the road: Baobab, Breeding, Gardening, Earthworms, Taro, Pollinators, Llama, Trees, Chili peppers
- More on how the baobab is coming to Europe.
- Review of breeding for nutritionally improved crops.
- Book on the origins of British gardening.
- Earthworms “modulate the competition between grasses and legumes.”
- ACIAR publishes book on taro pests in the Pacific.
- UNEP launches global pollinator conservation initiative.
- Unusual use for livestock fetuses.
- “And she grows more than 100 types of trees…“
- “Along the equator, without access to refrigeration, you could be dead pretty quickly unless you can find a way to protect yourself against the microbes you ingest every day.”
Nibbles: Food, Organic, Halophyte, Aromatic, Botanical garden, Coffee, Verroa mite, Pastoralists
- What’s good here? I love globalization.
- An organic oasis in Egypt.
- Today’s crop of the future: Salicornia.
- English lavender?
- Florida botanical garden collects plants threatened by climate change.
- “Los Delirios is a blend of Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon beans grown near Esteli, Nicaragua.”
- Fungus to help honey bees fight mites.
- “During our grandfathers’ time there were different types of grasses here, some for the cows and others for the goats and sheep. Now there’s no grass, the land has become barren.”
Nibbles: Afghanistan, Zucchini
- Support for small-scale private seed enterprises in Afghanistan. Including landraces?
- “It has no real taste of its own, piggybacking on whatever it is prepared with.”