- 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.
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…”
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?
Organic farms mapped
There are 10,159 organic farms in the US 1 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.
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.
Nibbles: James McWilliams, Flowering plant origins, Moon plant, Satellites
- “Should we be working to create local foodsheds in areas that have to import water in order to be fertile?” Dude, you had me at foodsheds.
- Endosperm “made human civilization possible.”
- First plant on moon a brassica?
- Eye in sky finds missing sweet potatoes.
- Can you think of a better way to use a rooftop than to grow rice on it and then to brew sake? Didn’t think so.