Organic agriculture

Nibbles: Monocultures redux, Seedless watermelons, Red kiwifruit, Herbaria problems, Forest foods, Sorghum beer, SIRGEALC, Chinese veggies, Organic tomatoes, Andean women, Rise origins, Fermentation

Deploy your cover crop diversity in time rather than space. But deploy it.
Triploid goodness.
Searching for a red kiwi.
Herbaria on the rack.
Let them eat non-timber forest products.
Sorghum spurts in Kenya. Because beer.
Sign up for SIRGEALC 10.
Knowing your 菠菜 from your 西洋菜.
400 tomato varieties. No pesticides. No water. No problem.
Women are conserving Andean crops. Sure, though with some occasional help from genebanks.
The Rice Origins Wars continue.
Sauerkraut changed the world.

An investment in organic research. At last.
Plant models go online. Not those kinds of models.
Where the peppers for Tabasco sauce come from.
Apparently, “[w]hite alpacas have been overbred.” But not that kind of breeding, I think.
Pigs are weird.
Learn how to make poles. Yes, those kinds of poles.
Even ducks can be heritage.
Higher carbon dioxide bad for nutrition.

Metabarcoding of poop reveals secret of large herbivore diversity in African savannahs.
Unique Omani banana fights pests.
Truffle dogs: “Il cane, le corna non te le mette mai…”
Traditional taro cultivation protects Hawaiian reef.
Organic farming pays.
Climate change favouring offspring of interspecies hybridization. Also in crops? Like brassicas maybe?
Domestication of silk worm probed molecularly. Is that even a word?
Video explains Baranaja. Spoiler alert: it’s the diversity, stupid.
And along the same lines: rare seeds go home.
Brazil wants to be among the top 5 fish producers in the world. What could possibly go wrong.
Extracts from Jules Pretty’s book on what we can all learn from more nature-loving societies.
The key to Inga conservation. Is keys.
Community-based forest management in the Yucatan: “Future generations have the right to know them.” And not just the trees, bees too.
Since we’re in Mexico: a visit to the genebank.
The women of beer. None of them using cassava, though, alas.
“El mercado tiene sus normas y los científicos no las conocemos”.
Agro-commodity traders can be good for you. Somebody mention the market?

Hard times for tea in Kenya. Believe me, I know, the mother-in-law never stops going on about it.
Agroecology, HuffPost piece and video.
Lessons on sustainable forest food harvesting from India.
Fixing Prunus africana harvesting: saying it is easier than doing it. Should have asked the Indians.
Studying weed.
Young people don’t like tequila. Farming its raw material, that is. Should maybe switch to weed? No, wait…
Weird Biblical food.
Did we miss this thing on perennial cereals when it first came out?
Nutritional composition of wheat hasn’t changed in 150 years. Not sure if that good or bad. What will happen when it goes perennial?

Fogcatcher ale? Oh I think so!
Greenpeace guides donors on ecological farming. Booklet on the preservation of historical monuments to follow.
Slow Food launches olive oil presidium. Presidium?
The ancient Greeks had wine for breakfast. Explains a lot.
Livestock size changes through the ages.
The sainted Lawrence Haddad on that biofortified pearl millet story from yesterday. Remember that variety can be traced back to a genebank. But not only millet.
Zambians told to look to their neglected traditional crops. By their government. Which is surely complicit in their neglect. Maybe biofortify them first?
Collecting tomato wild relatives.
July drought stops pine trees growing in the SW US.
Building a global genebank system. And again.
Saving the PNG coconut collection from Bogia disease. We need a Svalbard for coconuts is what we need.
Industrial crops and food security in sub-Saharan Africa: mainly complementary, but…