- Tobacco is enjoying a resurrection as a crop.
- Michigan State University to research adapting maize to climate change in Zambia and Kenya.
- Researchers & Restaurateurs Work to Save Peru’s Food Diversity; article and podcast. The really good news? Oca are not potatoes!
Nibbles: Pest management, Pest management, Small-scale farmers, Food fair, USDA stats
- Community management of pests is less efficient (in Spanish). Something to do with farmers not sharing information quickly enough.
- Birds help to control vineyard pests.
- Small-scale farmers can feed the world, as any fule kno.
- Smithsonian celebrates urban ag. Meh.
- Organic food festival Dec 16th, Ahmedabad, India. “The food items should necessarily involve use of indigenous varieties”.
- USDA stops counting sheep. And goats, catfish and hops, among others.
Nibbles: Tarwi, Pests, Planthoppers, Subsidies, Cereal breeding, EU legislation,
- A nice long video on Lupinus mutabilis: TARWI – Semillas del Futuro Vol.1. It has always, in my experience, been “del futuro”.
- BBC asks CABI chief scientist to pick his top 10 plant pests. What, no taro leaf blight?
- Nor planthoppers of Iran?
- Divert just four years’ worth of EU agricultural subsidies to pay off pretty much all of Greece’s public debt, and we could stave off a second global financial crisis while helping some of the world’s poorest people all at the same time. Not gonna happen.
- Videos from 15th EWAC-Eucarpia Cereals Section Conference. Luigi not featured. Yet.
- EU may decide on new seed laws tomorrow. Or not. Patrick unpacks it a bit.
Nibbles: Oca, Blog, Phones, UPOV, Finding seeds
- Someone else is interested in breeding oca for outside the Andes.
- Not to be outdone, the World Agroforestry Centre has a blog.
- Which somehow missed this story — Study finds mobile phones empower rural farmers — from World Agroforestry Centre.
- The Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV) has a new portal with added database goodness. Luigi dons his spelunking gear.
- No thanks, no need. From now on, like this guy in Hawaii, I’m googling.
Nibbles: Bangladeshi horticulture, USDA-ARS impact, NY native seeds, Spate irrigation, FIGS, Livestock trifecta
- The floating gardens of Bangladesh.
- So, USDA-ARS, what have you done for me lately?
- The story of Ed Toth, the director of New York City’s native plant center on Staten Island. In other news, New York City has a native plant center.
- Not all floods are bad.
- The Consortium discovers FIGS.
- Livestock genetic resources for the poor: The interview. And the PowerPoint. And the Fancy Science.