Organic agriculture

February 16, 2008February 16, 2008

A devoted gardner speaks

Michael Pollan looks at things from the point of view of agricultural biodiversity, and concludes we are all being manipulated by corn. ((Thanks to Hugh for the headsup.)) ((Sorry, the video is slightly wider than the column, but that’s down to the folks at TED, not us, and there’s nothing we can do about it other than distort Pollan.))

January 23, 2008January 23, 2008

E. coli in spinach: an answer

More complicated than it seems; feral pigs may have contaminated organic California spinach.

October 31, 2007October 30, 2007

Quality Low Input Food project

Organic good for you. Here comes the science.

October 27, 2007October 27, 2007

Surf’s up in Solomons

My friend Tony Jansen and his friend Jon put together this fun video on the Solomon Islands. It’s ostensibly about surfing, but there’s stuff in there about agricultural biodiversity too. I met Tony when he was working at Kastom Gaden Association, a great local NGO working on sustainable agriculture and nutrition issues. We worked together on the livelihoods assessment of the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal.

October 24, 2007October 24, 2007

Turks discuss organic farming

A report from the 1st Organic Farming Congress at BahÃ§eÅŸehir University in Turkey.

1. What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
2. Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
3. Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
4. What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
5. Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
6. Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
7. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
8. Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
9. Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
10. And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
11. And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
12. Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
13. You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
14. I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
15. Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
16. No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…
Published on April 4, 2025