- AGRA’s first eight PhD students get to work.
- Papa Andina Regional Initiative assessed by CGIAR CAPrI. Can’t be bothered reading the whole thing? Try this.
- Factsheets for farmers in Kenya and Uganda; Luigi’s MIL not available for comment.
- Tequila for lunch: Jeremy comments: “Wish I could be at this seminar, at the University of California, Davis”.
- Dogon agriculture 101.
- Got yak milk?
Mo’ better beans
Iowa State University has been awarded $450,000 by the US Agency for International Development to improve beans in Rwanda. The University’s Center for Sustainable Rural Livelihoods will work with local partners to see whether improving yields will result in beans that are more nutritious or more marketable or — Jackpot! — both. Nice idea, and if it succeeds a valuable contribution to fighting hunger and poverty in the region. As ever with this sort of project, however, one wonders whether specific steps will be taken to preserve the existing bean biodiversity that improved varieties will almost certainly displace.
Tropical beer
You may remember a post a few days ago on how barley is being replaced by sorghum for commercial beer-brewing in West Africa. Coincidentally, Timbuktu Chronicles pointed me to a 2004 paper which evaluated different local replacements for hops. Sorghum-and-cola beer, anyone? Anyone?
Nibbles: Potatoes, livestock, artemesia
- File under “never too late”: Ireland diversifies its potatoes.
- UK establishes livestock breeds committee. Not concerned about species?
- “All I think of is more and more artemesia,” says shilling millionaire Ugandan farmer.
Out and about: Smithfield Horse Market
This just in from our friend and occasional contributor Danny Hunter out and about in Dublin admiring the agricultural biodiversity on show in a local market.
I walked one minute up the road to the Smithfield Horse Market and was surprised at how big a concern it was. There were horses, ponies and donkeys of all sorts. It was chaotic and pretty much unmanaged. Largely run by and catering for the Traveller community. At one stage there was a bare knuckle fist fight between two brothers apparently. If you missed that you could always go to the van selling videos which had a wide range of DVDs of all sorts of family members, friends and foes slugging it out (among the many road races the Travellers organise in various places). Kids as young as 12 years old were buying and selling! While it is always lovely to be around horses and get some nice shots it all seemed a bit brutal and sad. I liked the scene of the guy with crash helmet and shetland pony walking through the market. After a few hours of sweet fresh horse dung I set off on the Luas for the fresh lungs of Bray and did the 10km coast walk to Greystones.
