- National Geographic video on how growing acai is changing lives in Brazil.
- “When farmers and activists get together, food culture ferments like delicious sauerkraut.”
- Botswanans eat more millet and sorghum if it is easier. Alert the press.
- Mayor wants Londoners to grow local. Jeremy asks: are they hiring?
- It’s six foot, seven foot, eight foot, BUNCH!
- Breeding pheasants in captivity.
- African Herbal Pharmacopoeia.
Nibbles: Chickens, Realpolitik, Apples, Kew, Maize, Local food
- Chicken wild relatives to rescue breeds.
- Politics as theatre as politics: report from Terra Madre.
- Little shrines to bottled water … Levazza peddling an industrial and inferior product: more from Terra Madre.
- Season of mists and apple biodiversity. Thanks Sarah.
- The wonder that is Kew Gardens and its Millennium Genebank.
- What’s wrong with the maize seed sector in Africa?
- Some reasons to buy local food, though maybe not ten as advertised.
Cassava rules
The IITA public awareness machine must be in overdrive, and it looks like it’s running on cassava. Today
- a cassava mosaic project got a namecheck in the Sunday Tribune,
- news of a newly released drought tolerant variety got picked up in African Science News Service, and
- a meeting on value addition got an article in the wonderfully-named Daily Triumph.
Not that I’m complaining. It’s about time cassava got the attention it deserves in Africa.
Chocolate industry meets all over the place
The cacao community is meeting in Ghana under the sponsorship of Mars to draft a plan for sustainable cacao farming in Africa:
Topics on the table range from multifunctional agriculture, genetics and germplasm, to pest and disease, and science and leadership.
I hope they will also consider the kind of value-adding that is being discussed at the just-opened annual Paris chocolate show.
Nibbles: Big tent, Certification, Macadamia, Wild harvest, Last meals
- Biodiversity and ecosystems experts to enter big tent: any room for agriculture?
- Japan to recognize sustainable practices that value biological diversity in agriculture, forestry, and fisheries via cute logo.
- Saving drought-resistant macadamia.
- Free food!
- Endangered food.