- See what WWF thinks will make agriculture sustainable.
- Americans are dying younger. Obesity partly to blame.
- Study shows how scientists can get farmers to innovate. And vice versa?
- Iron-age beer in France. “Beer … might have resembled modern home brews.” Which might have created a nation of wine-drinkers.
- Voice of America ♥ Nourishing the Planet. (African farmers also important.)
- Bacteria in mosses on tree branches fertilize forest soils. How long before the whole thing is available in a packet?
- Bioengineering the prairie. Together with, presumably, its crop wild relatives.
Nibbles: Bramleys, FAO vs Big AG, Biofuels, Honduras, Indigenous food
- Awesome apple tree awes impressionable TV reporter shock.
- Food fight!
- Food fight referee?
- Recent developments in the world of biofuels; CABI sorts the good, the bad and the indifferent.
- A blogger asks: “What is the appropriate mix of policies regarding agriculture in Honduras?“
- Watch a video on an indigenous food festival in Thailand by following instructions here. Note to film-makers: there are simpler ways to share a video.
Nibbles: Cattle affected, Conservation, Wildfires, Grains, Sudan’s PGR, Sunflowers
- Rare breed of cattle affected by climate change.
- MoBot to host conference on Global Plant Conservation Strategy, 5-7 July 2011
- Russian wildfires expected to be worse this year. What price wheat?
- GOOD gets its head around the meaning of “grain”. As in “15-grain bread in supermarkets”.
- Sudan Agricultural Research Corporation’s Plant Genetic Resources Programme popped up in my Reader. No idea why.
- Uganda’s farmers discover the value of sunflowers.
Nibbles: Millet, Goat, Heirloom Veg, Tamarind, Rice domestication, Rice sustainability, Microbes, Competition
- The importance of multi-purpose crops in Africa.
- The importance of multi-purpose goats, everywhere.
- Target reader reviews The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Heirloom Vegetables.
- Tamarind charcoal loses out to tamarind drink, Malawian villagers rejoice.
- Has intellectual piracy been with us since humans first became engaged in agricultural production? AoB blog asks the tough ones.
- Land-use intensity and Ecological Engineering – Assessment Tools for risks and Opportunities in irrigated rice based production systems launched. Glad they have an acronym.
- Microbe diversity matters too.
- OK, so nobody nominated us, but the semi-finalists at the 3QD science writing competition have been announced.
Nibbles: Wheat disease, Dried vegetables, Gates spending in Africa, Canadian spending in India, Ethiopian wheat
- Wheat disease understood; sequence of leaf blotch fungus.
- Wheat disease conquered? “Super varieties” resistant to UG99 and yield 15% more. What could go wrong?
- Zambian farmers urged to dry vegetables for fun and profit (and better nutrition).
- Gates Foundations has spent US$1.7 billion on agriculture in Africa, so far.
- Swaminathan Foundation scores Canadian support for research on agriculture, poverty and nutrition. h/t PAR.
- Bioversity Seeds for Needs distributes preselected genebank wheat varieties to Ethiopian women farmers to adapt to climate change.