Stop the mudness is the slogan of the Great Lakes Commission sediment-reduction campaign aimed squarely at farmers in North America. It’s the centre of an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun pointing out the many pitfalls associated with farms that grow monocultures of annuals and leave the soil bare most of the year. What’s pleasing is that efforts to reduce soil run-off will always also increase agricultural biodiversity.
Eco-entrepreneurs
The Independent newspaper has a great story about people in Britain who are trying to make a buck (or rather a pound, I suppose) from nature’s bounty. There are five examples, ranging from a guy making sloe gin to another who sells a chopped up, boiled seaweed called purple laver (Porphyra umbilicalis). That’s apparently the basis of an intriguing traditional Welsh treat called laverbread. How do these products reach consumers? A separate article – this one in The Times – on country markets provides one answer.
Traditional farming in Spain … and elsewhere
National Geographic has a fine feature called Photo of the Day. Today’s shows a Spanish farmer with a wooden, sled-like contraption with sharp rocks embedded in the bottom. It’s a threshing board, used at harvest time to cut up straw, separate cereal grains from chaff and break open chickpea pods. Now, unfortunately I can’t just take the NatGeo photo and put it up here for you to see, you’ll just have to go to their site, but I did look around for an illustration that was in the public domain, and I found it at Answers.com, in a fascinating article on the history of these tools. The NatGeo photo is worth seeing, though. While surfing, I also ended up at the Food Museum Online, which I’d never come across before. It’s not the prettiest looking site, but it has some great content, including illustrations of traditional farming practices and tools. There’s also a blog, with a feed.
Photo of a Spanish “trillo” by José-Manuel Benito
Tropical Europe
It is easy to forget that Europe – at least political Europe, if not geographical Europe – includes some sub-tropical and tropical areas, ranging from the Azores to French Guyana. Now there’s a project which tries to bring some of these territories together “to identify common challenges” in biodiversity conservation and “tackle them in a coordinated way.” It is called NET-BIOME (NETworking tropical and subtropical Biodiversity research in OuterMost regions and territories of Europe in support of sustainable development). I know what you’re thinking: will it address agricultural biodiversity? Difficult to say from the information I’ve been able to find on it, but needless to say I for one think it should!
EU puts Trust in Sheep
A new Consortium to study heritage sheep breeds across Europe got off the ground recently with a meeting in Yorkshire, England. The meeting came at the end of a project set up by the European Union, although I confess I have found it very difficult to find out more. Help, if you can.
Heritage breeds are not necessarily rare, but they are often geographically isolated and that can put them at risk. After the most recent outbreak of foot and mouth disease in England man thousand Herdwicks were dead in England, and blue tongue threatened the Mergelland sheep of the Netherlands. The project will study threats and how to conserve and make use of sheep breeds. According to Amanda Carson, of the Sheep Trust, who is leading the new European consortium, “the information we gather will also inform policy-makers, nationally and at European level, about the best way to look after our farm animal genetic resourcesâ€.