Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
From Wales, no less, that hotbed of biodiversity, comes a report on the use of wood to fuel power stations. Not exactly novel, the arguments are nevertheless entertaining.
“With a guaranteed outlet for the wood it makes sense to manage woodlands. If we take care when working the woodland it can also benefit biodiversity. By using a local product instead of imported oil we can support local businesses and use local labour.”
The Harvard International Review has a web exclusive on The Politics of Food that will take some digesting…
I thought that Americans called sweet potatoes “yams,” full stop. But it turns out I’m wrong. Let Pete Petersen, an Oregon produce expert, tell you why, and much else besides.
Cultivating cranberries (Vaccinium spp) is pretty weird, involving as it does constructing beds by scraping off the topsoil and replacing it with sand, building dykes around them, and then flooding them at harvest time to collect the floating berries after threshing the vines. The crop is always in the news around this time of year because it is an important item on the menu of the Thanksgiving meal in the US, as a tangy accompaniment to roast turkey. Which is why the National Geographic website has posted this great video about the harvesting process.
The Prime Minister, no less, has told Tanzanian farmers to grow sorghum rather than maize, where appropriate, because maize “does not enhance their economic status”, according to a report in The Daily News. Mr Lowassa pushed millet and cowpeas too. He also expressed indignation at the way farmers were recklessly cutting down trees and allowing cattle to graze close to water sources.