Organic agriculture

June 10, 2009June 10, 2009

DIVERSEEDS puts out DVD

DIVERSEEDS is a scientific project supported fully by the European Commission´s 6th framework programme. We are “Networking on conservation and use of plant genetic resources in Europe and Asia.”

And I think we may have mentioned them before. Anyway, the latest news from the network is that they have a DVD out:

This documentary shows why biodiversity is important for agriculture and how it is conserved and used in many different locations in Europe and Asia.

The DVD costs about US$40, but you can get a discount if you order five or more. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you much more about it. But the contents seems to consist of a series of fifteen or so short (average 3 minutes) films on a wide variety of agrobiodiversity conservation and use initiatives, ranging from the Austrian NGO Arche Noah, to the Thai genebank, to crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent, to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. I’ll try to get hold of a copy and report.

June 2, 2009June 2, 2009

Nibble: Coconut, Punjab, Oak barrels, Schools, Podcasts, Origins squared, Apples, Fruit book

Coconut beetle attack in Cambodia.
Indian Green Revolutionary goes organic.
Forests leave fingerprint in wine.
School gardening in Ghana, farmer field school for women and children in Panama.
WWF launches podcast series “The Wild Things.” Bioversity to counter with “The Cultivated Things.”
Oldest pottery found in Chinese cave with oldest rice.
The transition to agriculture “was entered into slowly and reluctantly.” Evidence from the Netherlands, of all places.
Got an apple orchard? Wanna be a star?
Hunting down The Fruit Hunters.

May 12, 2009

Nibbles: CCD, Organic breeding, Bioprospecting

“The growing consensus among researchers is that multiple factors such as poor nutrition and exposure to pesticides can interact to weaken colonies and make them susceptible to a virus-mediated collapse.”
“…breeding spring wheat specific to organic agriculture should be conducted on organically managed land.”
“A project developing medicinal products from plants found in Kakamega forest, western Kenya, has transformed the livelihoods of nearby communities…”

May 4, 2009May 4, 2009

Nibbles: Asparagus, Eels, ICT, Dingoes, Phoenix dactylifera, Apples, Bear-pit

Liguria’s asparago violetto gets Slow Food treatment.
“The bottom line is we just don’t know why they are struggling so badly.”
Using mobile phones to treat plant pests and diseases in Uganda.
Dingoes have positive effect on biodiversity.
Date palm genome mapped.
Boffins see the light, explain negative effect of fertilizers on biodiversity.
Brogdale situation “better,” but for how long?
Wait, Bern has a bear-pit?

May 3, 2009May 3, 2009

Organic farms mapped

There are 10,159 organic farms in the US ((Or there were in 2007, the date of the most recent agricultural census.)) and, unlike farms in general, they are distributed around the country in a series of distinct hotspots. I know this because the NY Times did its usual wondeful graphics number on the USDA’s numbers. I wonder what Paul Krugman would have to say about these particular business clusters.

organic-map
LATER: Oops, too fast on the old “Publish” button. If I’d waited to go live with the above until after browsing through my feed reader, I could have added that Food & Water Watch have a complementary map of factory farms in the US. Which I found out about via a story in the Atlantic Food Channel that was actually about something different, the global provenance of food.

LATER STILL: Alas, the map of organic farm distribution bears more than a passing resemblance to that for greed. Kinda.

greed