- Sacred groves explained.
- Filipinos encouraged to grow fibres.
- New AJFAND is out.
- “Inclusive business models†good for livelihoods, maybe agrobiodiversity too.
- Because it’s there. Disease and fermentation.
- There’s a booming market for chiguiro meat in Venezuela, which is bad for the chiguiro in Colombia.
(Super)marketing agriculture
The latest ICT Update from CTA is all about market information systems in developing countries. A few months ago it was fair trade. ((Note that, as with us here, you can have a look at the geographical coverage of ICT Update’s articles.)) One of the featured articles is about Kenya’s commodity exchange, and the changes it has undergone since ICT Update first reported on it in 2002. This now officially qualifies as a trend. There was also news today that Ghana is thinking about following — and learning from — Ethiopia in setting up an “agricultural commodity exchange … to bring producers, buyers and consumers together to trade on a common platform by providing ready market for farm gate products from the agricultural centers.”
And far, far away, at the other end of the supply chain, Supermarket Secrets is a long (very long!) look behind the scenes at modern supermarket “practices that have significant implications on the health of our environment, our animals, our food — and ultimately our own health.” ((Posted using ShareThis.))
LATER: Never rains but it pours. Here’s an example of such practices, from a review of the book Movable Feasts, by Sarah Murray, which sounds like a must-read: “Norwegian salmon is harvested, frozen, and sent by container ship to China, where it is de-boned in a factory, refrozen, and then sent on to markets in Europe and the US.”
Nibbles: Rescue, Biofuels, Striga, Dogs, Vegetable seed, Mulberry, Afghanistan, Aquaculture, Abaca
- Global Crop Diversity Trust “on track” to reinvigorate 100,000 varieties, “one of the largest and most successful biological rescue efforts ever undertaken”. Jeremy says: “Kariba Dam.”
- More reasons to go perennial. And native to boot.
- Farmers go crazy with Striga-resistant maize.
- Design-a-pooch just around the corner, thanks to genome sequencing. Well it was all worth it then, wasn’t it.
- AVRDC teaches Solomons farmers to save seeds, grandma to suck eggs.
- Mulberries cryopreserved. Yay! Now for that productivity.
- Turning grapes to raisins, swords to plowshares, in Afghanistan.
- District Fishery Officer (In-charge) tells of guy “farming in a floodplain adjacent to Coler Beel under the same upazila and earns a net profit of Taka 9 lakh after selling 80 metric tons of harvested fish from the Beel last year.”
- Abaca: quantity or quality?
What the hell is going on in Ivory Coast?
I only ask because on the same day (yesterday), the BBC published a piece entitled “Ivory Coast’s sweet cocoa success” while the Financial Times had “Ivory Coast’s cocoa industry stares hard at a bleak future.” Maybe it’s my gloomy nature, and my plummeting faith in the BBC, but I believe the FT story more.
Invasion of the (edible) killer crabs
Two stories of invasives, one with a silver lining (perhaps), the other not so much.
The Chinese mitten crab has settled in the Thames, causing trouble of varied sorts. Bad. Boffins at the Natural History Museum think it can be harvested and sold in restaurants and special food shops. Good. I look forward to seeing participants at the Henley Royal Regatta dodging around the crab farms.
And from Utah — the Beehive State, ironically — the first sightings of Africanized “killer” bees. As if bees didn’t have enough problems already, what with their colonies collapsing and everything. Never rains but it pours.
LATER: And here’s another invasive you can eat.
LATER STILL: There’s a nice roundup of Colony Collapse Disorder at CABI’s blog.