Category: Organic agriculture

Posted on

Evil locavore Alice Walters destroys California education

When is it a bad idea for children to play around in school gardens?

This notion—that it is agreeably possible to do good (school gardens!) and live well (guinea hens!)—bears the hallmark of contemporary progressivism, a kind of win-win, “let them eat tarte tatin” approach to the world and one’s place in it that is prompting an improbable alliance of school reformers, volunteers, movie stars, politicians’ wives, and agricultural concerns (the California Fertilizer Foundation is a big friend of school gardens) to insert its values into the schools.

Posted on

Nibbles: Goldman Environmental Prize, UK networking, European landraces publication, Seed Warriors, India agrobiodiversity sites, Beer books, Teosinte, Drought foods, Sugarcane genebank, Regional genebank in South Asia, Rhubarb, Annals, Food articles, Cryo

  • Goldman Prizewinner Jesús León Santos: “It is time we recognize that traditional agricultural methods can make strong contributions to biodiversity conservation. We should encourage it and value it as a way to produce healthy foods that conserve and care for the environment.” Time indeed.
  • British twofer: The Food Climate Research Network aims “to better understand how the food system contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and to research and promote ways of reducing them.” Then there’s the Foresight Project on Global Food and Farming Futures. Will they talk to each other, I wonder.
  • From Bioversity, “European landraces: on-farm conservation, management and use.” I wonder if the Foresight Project will download a copy.
  • The “Seed Warriors” trailer. Oscar buzz, I hear.
  • Agricultural biodiversity heritage sites in India. Ethnobotanist brings together information on food plants used during drought. Mashup, anyone?
  • A book about beer. My two favourite things. Oooh, here’s another couple! And it’s not over: Spiegel weighs in on the old chestnut about beer being the reason for agriculture. My tankard runneth over.
  • CIMMYT team monitors teosinte. Teosinte planning to fight back.
  • Regional sugarcane genebank is actually being used! Heartwarming. Oh, and, coincidentally, here’s a history of Indian sugarcane breeding.
  • “A SAARC Plant Genetic Resource Bank for rice, wheat and maize may be created to facilitate free exchange of germplasm between the member countries. To begin with, the Indian Gene Bank facilities may be utilized, with suitable modalities.” Not so heartwarming.
  • The Russian roots of Alaskan rhubarb. Take that, Palin! Note the bit about St Isaac’s Cathedral, which of course sits opposite VIR. How apposite is that?
  • Nigel Chaffey rounds up the usual suspects in presenting a potpourri of “plant-based items from the world’s media” for Annals of Botany. May well be one to watch. And not just because genebanks make an appearance.
  • Amazing food roundup.
  • Cryopreserving Chip, the Tennessee fainting goat.
Posted on

Waste promotes organic food?

David Zetland has an interesting take on that 40% of American food is wasted paper.

[I]t seems possible to switch all production to organics:

  • We can have enough, even with 40 percent lower yields.
  • Higher prices would reduce demand for food, and thus obesity. (They may cause people to switch to cheaper foods, but those tend to be better for you — rice vs meat — if you ignore the idea that steakhouse diners will switch to McDs.)

Of course, this will not happen through regulation or a wholesale change in people’s demand for food. It could happen if water or carbon use was taxed: that waste uses 25 percent of fresh water and 300 million bbl oil; that’s not even counting methane resulting from rot.

Posted on

Looks like we got ourselves a dialectic

Oglio, a third generation farmer eschews modern farming techniques — chemicals, fertilizers, heavy machinery — in favor of a purely natural approach. It is not just ecological, he says, but profitable, and he believes his system can be replicated in starving regions of the globe.

Nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 km) away, in laboratories in St. Louis, Missouri, hundreds of scientists at the world’s biggest seed company, Monsanto, also want to feed the world, only their tools of choice are laser beams and petri dishes.

Reuters anticipates the World Summit on Food Security with the standard oppositional fare.