So apparently Swiss farmers will no longer be able to feed cannabis to their cows. Bummer.
An appreciation of the importance of crop diversity
There’s an important post entitled Vegetables of Mass Destruction over at The Daily Kos, a blog. Important not so much for the content, most of which is familiar, well-meaning and just a tad parochial, but for the location. The Daily Kos is one of the most popular sites in the blogosphere, averaging around half a million visits a day. If just some of those readers go away with a slightly better appreciation of the value of agricultural biodiversity, that will be A Good Thing. So thanks to cookiebear and The Daily Kos for their support.
Diversity and Art
It’s a good weekend for unconsidered and diverse ramblings. Take the latest news to arrive on sorghum: an artist called Matthew Moore used sorghum and black-bearded wheat to create a scale-replica of a housing estate being built on land sold by his family. The houses are sorghum, the roads wheat. And the wheat wasn’t wasted. A local farmer so liked the piece that he harvested it for free. Details of the project, and Moore’s other work, here.
Photo by Matthew Moore, from WFMU.
Pigs stick it to farmer
Even dedicated diversity seekers need a laugh from time to time — which I got from this blog post detailed the birth of a litter of barbed piglets.
Peppers fight flab
It seems that capsaicin, the stuff that gives hot peppers their zing, prevents immature fat cells developing into the fully-fledged sort. At least in laboratory experiments – but at levels not unlike those found in the stomachs of people who’ve just eaten a Thai meal. So, rather than jogging today, I’m going for a curry.