Don’t make any plans for 18 September: it’s World Bamboo Day. And it’s the climax of the VIII World Bamboo Congress in Thailand, which goes under the title of Bamboo, the Environment and Climate Change this year. If you don’t think bamboo is particularly important, read about the plight of a Bhutanese village. Via the INBAR website, via the new NWFP newsletter.
Nibbles: Slow evening, Chillis, Wild potato, Thresher
- An Evening of Conversation with Carlo Petrini: “I found it both inspiring and frustrating.”
- A retired employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lopez, 70, is not your typical chile farmer.
- Wild potato confers resistance to root-knot nematode. Ask for it by name: PA99N82-4
- A simple machine for threshing sorghum and millet in developing countries. Go team!
Nibbles: Invasives, Climate change^2, Bananas, Fibres
- Songs raise awareness about aquatic invasive species. Jeremy says: Kill me now.
- Long, long post about climate change in Africa. Part 2 “coming soon”.
- Yemen prepares for climate change. Need a “strategy for the promotion of rain-fed agriculture”.
- Bananas from Iceland … Jeremy says: I don’t get it.
- New Agriculturist focuses on natural fibres.
Nibbles: Taxonomy, Herbs, Animal domestication, Bio-char, Videos, French fries, Barcoding
- Plea from taxonomist to nutritionists and food people: use scientific names and get them right.
- Cooking writer doesn’t get the hint.
- New Scientist rounds up bunch of recent animal domestication studies.
- DIY bio-char; Muck & Mystery has some ideas.
- Diverseeds has videos of diverse seeds.
- “For one week, 2500 people from Noirmoutier use all their might to harvest this precious La Bonnotte potato by hand.”
- Barcoding bananas: useful for field genebanks?
A little little barley goes a long way
Like I say, not a day goes by. Yesterday, ramie. Today, little barley. As in:
They likely ate sunflower, marsh elder, two types of chenopod—a family that includes spinach and beets—and possibly squash and little barley, according to the findings. The people also grew bottle gourd to make into containers.
That would be the Riverton people living three thousand years ago along the Wabash River in present-day Illinois.
The Riverton crops may have “added to what was [already] a successful life” for the ancient Americans, said Brian Redmond, curator and head of archaeology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio.
Yes, because…
…[b]efore they began farming, the Riverton people lived among bountiful river valleys and lakes, apparently eating a healthy and diverse diet of nuts, white-tailed deer, fish, and shellfish, the study says.
So the Riverton people were not reacting to some environmental stress as a matter of survival when they became agriculturalists, but rather “engaging in a bit of gastronomic innovation.” Good for them.