Organic agriculture

Nibbles: Polyploidy study, Agrobiodiversity policy, Organic livestock, Innovation, Buffett on small farms

$2 million to study strawberries sounds like quite a lot, but then it is to investigate polyploidy in general.
Agroforesters hear about IPR and agrobiodiversity. Probably not for the first, or last, time.
Let’s not forget that even animal husbandry can be organic.
“A lack of evidence to convince policymakers holds back progress on grassroots innovation in agriculture.” Weird; doesn’t seem to hold them back on anything else.
What Howard G. Buffett knows about small farms. Campaign for Real Farming has made his words available.

ICRISAT DG agrees with Bioversity DG. Kinda. CGIAR DGs communicating via blog. Who’d have thunk it.
Borlaug Global Rust Initiative gives its first Gene Stewardship Award to Nepali breeders. I wonder if they work with community genebanks at all. Or what they think about them. Or even if they know they are there.
GCARD 2 is coming, socially networked up the wazoo. Be afraid.
Authenticating natural health products via barcoding.
FAO discussion on making agriculture work for nutrition.
Nice photos of wild bees.
Not sure if we already linked to the big report on why biotechnology is not delivering drought-resistant crops.
Meet a Breeder. Conventional, natch.
Who moved my artisanal cheese?
Bird diversity on intensive farms like happy Tolstoyan familes: the same everywhere.
What’s a poor cacao farmer to do? Obey the law and make a loss, or break it in the hope of breaking even?
Kew does the crop wild relatives thing for Plantwise, and check out that picture!
Nature discovers perreniation as salvation of African soils; can resilieficiency be far behind?

Meta-analysis or no meta-analysis, breeders still want to breed for organic conditions.
Farm Radio does tree farming.
A plea for metallophytes. Every damn plant group has a lobby these days. I bet some of them are crop wild relatives though.
As does almost every style of food preparation. Although I have to say I myself can never read enough about fermentation.
This video is advertised as being about food preservation, and I was going to link it to the above, but it turns out to be about seed storage. Which is interesting enough, and important too, but not the same thing. A clever video, which I personally think doesn’t in the end make its point.

Can cultivated species get their own Red List? Stefano Padulosi asks the tough questions.
Açaí: could the wonder fruit also be wonderful for forests? CIFOR asks the tough questions.
And more: You mean you can eat that?
Horticulture has rock stars? My turn to ask the tough questions.
Ok, so what US county is “…a hotbed of diversified, small-scale organic, natural processed food production”? Maybe not so tough.
Will there be a follow-up to Lancet’s 2008 series on malnutrition? That’s an easy one.
Luigi’s mother-in-law asks: Where can I get my hands on that drought-resistant tea?
Got any other questions? World Wide Views on Biodiversity wants to hear from you, this Saturday. (Answers too, I suppose.)

Faidherbia albida gets another push. To quote from the recent Crops for the Future dissection of neglected/underutilized species: if it’s so good, how come it’s not used more?
The Indo-European roots of names for pulse crops. Not nearly as boring as it sounds. Oh, and since we’re on the subject…
Human biodiversity files: athleticism, foodism.
Huge EU project monitors pollinators. What could possibly go wrong?
Cleaning up DNA Sequence Database Hell.
Nice biodiversity hotspot maps. No plants. Definitely no agrobiodiversity.
A philosopher’s take on that organic agriculture meta-analysis.
Not Musa, but still edible.