- The International Symposium on Aromatic and Medicinal Plants, 3-6 November 2008 in Noumea, New Caledonia. Anyone interested in live blogging it for us? He asked, to thunderous silence.
- Modern Forager on the traditional diets of some funky places.
- IRRI flickrs rice photos. Another day, another neologism. Via.
- The lengths people will go to exchange agrobiodiversity. Sorry, I have a thing about maps of trade routes. Via.
- Australian woman adopts Italian cucumber.
- Corn domesticated even earlier in Ecuador.
- Sweet potato may have got to the Pacific islands by chance.
- The truth about those hipster farmers; “it must be true, I read it in the paper”.
Follow your tree in Google Earth
I agree with Frank Taylor at Google Earth Blog: it is a really good idea. You go to mybabytree.org, pay $5.50, and WWF plants a tree (you have a choice of 3 species) for you in Sebangau National Forest in Kalimantan, Indonesia, and sends you a KML file of its location. How about doing the same for heirloom varieties of fruit trees or something?
Potato museums
So there’s an Idaho Potato Museum. I found out because four local worthies have just been nominated to its Hall of Fame. It seems a fun enough place, but definitely somewhat more parochial than the Potato Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. NPR did a piece on this latter outfit earlier this year, what with it being the International Year etc etc.
Pass the bottle
This was mentioned in a recent comment, but it is worth highlighting more visibly. Andy Waterhouse from the Department of Viticulture and Enology, and Charlie Bamforth, Anheuser-Busch Professor of Malting and Brewing Sciences, both at UC Davis, debate wine vs beer. Sounds like a win-win to me.
Malaria pics
I don’t think you need to have had malaria to be profoundly moved by John Stanmeyer’s photographs for National Geographic 1, though no doubt it helps. The New Agriculturist gathered some thoughts on the link between malaria and agriculture some years back. I picked up my dose here:
But I didn’t have to cope with it while also trying to grow enough food for my children. And talking of pictures on watery themes, check out these from the BBC on a Nigerian (cat)fishing festival.