- British hill sheep in trouble.
- Canadian maple syrup in trouble.
- Fruits good for you.
- Native urban plants in trouble. How many crop wild relatives among them?
- “If the world learned to feed itself half a century ago, why are there now more hungry people than ever before?” Er … I dunno. Either-orism?
- “Almost all of the 300 experts at a two-day food forum in Rome this week agreed that between them they had all the answers to how to feed the world in 2050, but doubted they would have the political support to do it.” Alert the media!
- “Erosion of Crop Diversity Worrying“. Malawian plant breeder speaks.
- British wildflowers in trouble, prince says? How many crop wild relatives among them? Does prince know? Care?
- Indian crops in trouble.
Nibbles: Markets, Easter Island, Honey, Coffee, Cowpea, Morocco, Urban Ag, Kenya
- I love pictures of agrobiodiversity in markets.
- Humans did for trees on Rapa Nui after all, not rats.
- Like refining chocolate, extracting honey is a fragrant, messy process. Bring it on.
- Fair Trade coffee unfair to farmers, CIAT says.
- Another day, another genome. This time it’s cowpea.
- 2000 year old food forest in Morocco. Honestly! And guess what? It’s not thriving.
- Another video (long). Education of an Urban Farmer.
- Education of an ex-pastoralist farmer, Karamojong, Kenya
Nibbles: Teaching vegetables, Truffles, Freakonomics of farmer markets, Crops used for art, Seed storage, Organic farming in Spain, 2050
- Pamela Akinyi Nyagilo wins prize for teaching Kenyan kids to grow indigenous greens. In 2007, but better late with the news than never.
- The Great War did for truffles?
- “Does a local food system truly enhance the integrity of a community, much less make the peasant the equal of a prince and eliminate greed?” And more. And more. And more. And…
- Crop art, and more. And more.
- Brassica seeds survive 40 years in a genebank with no loss of viability. Phew.
- “It seems that, while discount and low-end retailers face more difficulties selling organic products, specialised organic shops and high-end retailers continue to develop beyond expectations.”
- “As Andy Jarvis, an award-winning crop scientist, puts it: ‘When you look at the graph, under even small average heat rises, the line for maize just goes straight down.’ “
Nibbles: Cowpea storage, Expensive Japanese apples, Nutrients in vegetables
- Sometimes breeding better cowpeas is not enough, they need to be bagged properly.
- Sometimes breeding better apples is not enough, they need to be bagged properly.
- Biofortifying brassica through breeding. No bags involved.
Nibbles: Introgression in sorghum, British cheese, Cassava development, Fishing
- “Farmers have quite accurate perceptions about the genetic nature of their sorghum plants, accurately distinguishing not only domesticated landraces from the others, but also among three classes of introgressed individuals, and classing all four along a continuum that corresponds well to genetic patterns. Their practices are fairly effective in limiting gene flow”
- Cheese map of Britain. Had no idea there was a National Cheese. I always liked Wensleydale.
- “I harvested part of the cassava and transported it to the nearest processing centre, where it was peeled, washed, pressed, dried and milled into cassava flour. They charged me Tsh600 per kilogramme (about half a dollar) and the market price was Tsh380 a kilo.”
- The giant Ponzi Scheme that is modern fishing.