- Agriculture 101: A graphic novel. Am I the only one who thinks novels aren’t necessarily true? First installment.
- Bioversity has a bunch of factsheets on Nutritious Underutilized Species.
- Why is a cacao tree not like an ATM? Because the ATM still pays out when its hot.
- Speaking of which, big long thought piece on Food Security and Climate Change.
- Giant pumpkins; not much diversity here, except in the agronomic approaches.
- Better access to markets may threaten specialist smallholder farmers. The case of Namibia.
- Ancient Roman ate lots of C4 photosynthesiser: millet!
- Wake up and smell the lack of green coffee.
- A couple of wannabe Mexican industrial crops get some exposure.
Nibbles: Rice straw, Rain makers, Sorghum beer, Gary Nabhan
- Egyptian tech turns rice straw into paper, insecticide. Don’t suppose anyone thought of turning it into the soil?
- Changing Kenyan climate threatens traditional rainmakers. Pouring cold water on my desire to make a witty comment.
- Diana learns how to hold her pombe straw, and much else besides.
- Gary Nabhan profile. He “gives life to nearly extinct grains, veggies.”
Nibbles: Swaziland, Traditional Knowledge, Climate change, Apples, Winged beans, Ambakkadan Cassava
- Queen Mother Ntombi Indlovukazi of Swaziland receives the FANRPAN 2011 Food Security Policy Leadership Award. Her son’s a caution too.
- Summaries of presentations at Informing International Policy on Traditional Knowledge, Mexico 2011.
- CGIAR book on “climate-proofing” crops critical to food security in the developing world.
- Happy Birthday to the McIntosh apple.
- Rhizowen’s winged beans fail to take flight.
- Sharefair hears how women farmers in India resurrected a favoured cassava.
- Sharefair hears dream-team pitch on frike, or as we prefer to say, freekeh.
Nibbles: Cow beauties, Ethnopharmacology etc
- UK High Comissioner in Namibia visits big agricultural show, discovers “hundreds of words [for] the markings on a cow“.
- CTA Wageningen has a (new?) dossier on Ethnopharmacology, food production, nutrition and biodiversity conservation: Towards a sustainable future for indigenous peoples.
Nibbles: Moringa, Fungi, Blue potatoes, GRAIN, Nutrition, Maize Day, Sorghum research
- Mexico embraces moringa against malnutrition.
- Get your mushroom spores here. (You’ll need something for the headache the page induces.)
- Scientist Gardener discovers blue potato chips at altitude.
- GRAIN gets altNobel. It’s not the winning. It’s the being nominated.
- Bioversity stuns world with nutrition strategy. While Jess does poo.
- Damn, looks like we missed National Maize Day again.
- How your United Sorghum Checkoff dollars are being spent.