- Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
- Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
- More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
- More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
- Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
- Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
- Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
- Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
- Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
- Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?
Nibbles: Bees, IFPRI, Undernutrition policy, Haiti earthquake, Yeast
- Latest news on the bee front ain’t good. Except on Isle of Man.
- IFPRI accused of being industry shills. But where’s the evidence?
- Commentary on Hilary Clinton’s undernutrition speech.
- Monsanto did not donate GMO seed to Haiti. But it was hybrids, so basically a one-off. Better than nothing? Adding insult to injury? I dunno, you decide.
- So apparently we have the unstable margins of chromosomes to thank for beer. I’ll drink to that.
Nibbles: Conservation, Women, Subsidies, Bees, Microbes, Rhizobia, Genebanks, Chicken history, Nordic genebank
- Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
- Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
- All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
- The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
- State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
- More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
- Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
- Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
- NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.
Nibbles: Heirloom store, Leaf miners, Mongolian drought, GPS, Coca, Ag origins, Aquaculture, Lice, Bud break in US, IFAD livestock, biofuels, Pig history
- “Housed in the towering old 1926 Sonoma County Bank, it’s hard to miss the Seed Bank.” And who would want to anyway.
- Of apples, leaf miners and bacteria. Great story.
- Best synthesis and analysis of the Mongolian dzud story so far.
- Visualize your GPS data! Not agrobiodiversity, I know, but I don’t have another blog.
- Coca myths debunked. Sniff sniff.
- “Crop domestication and the first plant breeders” book charpter online.
- Rebranding Asian carp. Hard row to hoe. Thanks, Don.
- 190,000 year old clothes had lice. 190,000 year old humans had clothes?
- More citizen science stuff, this one on effect of climate change on plant phenology in the US.
- IFAD publishes bunch of livestock-related papers. ILRI, are you listening?
- “It’s 36 percent more efficient to grow grain for food than for fuel.” Good to have a number.
- Boffins do their aDNA thing on Chinese pigs, find continuity, multiple domestication, sweet and sour sauce recipe.
- Soil Association begs to differ on that whole
UKworld-needs-to-double-food-production thing.
Nibbles: ILRI, Diversitas, Trees, Water use, Soil, Kenya, Microlivestock, Truffles, Climate data, Forests, Diseases, Plant breeding survey, Beer, and more beer, Pollinators
- ILRI annual programme meeting thing gets Twitter treatment. Web 2.0 seizes up.
- Via EcoagriculturePartners newsletter, news that agroBiodiversity has a new website. Web 1.0 surrenders.
- And the prize for the weirdest name for a tree-planting initiative goes to…
- The water footprint of pasta is greater than that of pizza. Still no cure for cancer.
- Microbes good for soil. I see that, and I raise you termites. Take that, Dirt Diva.
- Fish farming in dryland Kenya. Must get out to see one of these next time I’m there, maybe set one up on mother-in-law’s farm. And get her one of these funky backpacks while I’m at it. Wouldn’t want her to laze about.
- Farmer Brown (sic) from Ghana talks about his grasscutters.
- Ever wonder how one cultivates truffles? Wonder no more.
- FAO librarian answers agroclimatological query. Lots of databases for you to explore is the result.
- And also from FAO, the latest on the state of the world’s forests. More databases no doubt involved.
- Damn, you mean diversity can be good for disease?
- Study says that to “be effective plant breeders, … should also be equipped with strong critical thinking and time management skills, and a well-founded work ethic.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Climate change to affect beer? Now it’s personal!
- Wonder how Ugandans feel about that? Guide to Ugandan Beer, Part 1.
- Pollinators do the Harlem Flutter.