- FAO’s Regional Aquaculture Information System (RAIS) website launched. Covers the Gulf states.
- Pinoy farmers urged to go organic.
- Climate change risk mapped in SE Asia. Cambodia surrenders.
- Local weed makes good in Mexico.
- The Prunus mume collection at the Beijing Botanic Garden.
The business of sustainability
Emeka Okafor at Timbuktu Chronicles has turned me on to Sustainable Food Lab, a consortium of 70 businesses and social organizations dedicated to “accelerating the shift of sustainable food from niche to mainstream.” Among other agrobiodiversity-related things, they have a project on Allenbackia, which is what got Emeka excited in the first place. I like the geographic interface.
Talet for exploration
Rhizowen breaks his own rules in a long and very informative post about the hog peanut, which isn’t a peanut, but which he would fight a hog for. He prefers to call them Talet, the meso-american name for these underground beans. Amphicarpea bracteata is, Rhizowen reckons, well worth a closer look. If I had a garden, I’d do just that.
Cowpea farmers profit
A press release from the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (we picked it up at Modern Ghana.com) says that improved varieties of cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) are giving farmers 55% greater profits. The new varieties produce high quality grains and are resistant to the parasitic weed Striga. That’s great, and I have some questions.
What do we know about the heritage and breeding of the new varieties? Are they going to need replacement themselves, as pests and diseases adapt to them?
At least one was trialled in 1998 in California, and found to be possibly the best choice as a cover crop or green manure there. I wonder whether it was taken up?
Most interesting, to my mind, can we please get the full story? A quick poke around the intertubes reveals that one of these varieties — IT89KD-288 — has been around in the wild, as it were, since at least 1993, the year of “its accidental release to one farmer”. What happened? And what does it’s subsequent spread tell us about informal seed systems, farmer preferences, the role of extension services, etc. etc?
Non-wood forest products digested but not fed
The new NWFP-Digest is out. At least if you get the alert from FAO by email. If you go to the “Current issue” page on the website you still get the last issue. It should change in the next few days. But why no RSS feed? I’m beginning to think it’s just me that thinks RSS feeds can significantly boost ease of use at no cost.