Podcasts

September 19, 2008September 19, 2008

“The maize equivalent of the grey wolf”

Not content with bringing you Our Man Hijmans’ dynamite written dispatches from Harlan II, today, The Spoken Word. David Williams, coordinator of the CGIAR’s System-wide Genetic Resources Programme, appeared on Insight, a daily in-depth interview programme hosted by radio station KXJZ in Sacramento, California. David talked about domestication, genetic modification, the history of collecting, the importance of crop wild relatives and much else besides.

Listen to it here. (About 12 minutes.)

August 20, 2008August 20, 2008

Nibbles: Ag origins, MSV origins, Land origins, Art,

Podcast on the origins, history and future of agriculture. “Three annual grasses explain history.” “Wheat domesticated humans.” Etc. Richard Manning gives good value.
The origin of Maize Streak Virus explored.
Changes in Dutch agricultural land. More diversity in land use over time.
More ag art. Via.

August 8, 2008August 8, 2008

Nibbles: Dog genetics, ITPGRFA, Mapping, Neolithic, Insects, Markers, Soybeans, Milk

Man’s best friend helps out again.
Intellectual Property Watch looks at the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. And they found that it was good. Well, kinda.
More on predicting the results of climate change on species distributions.
A nice summary of what agriculture has meant for human genetics. I vote we go back to hunting and gathering.
New insectarium allows you to eat exhibits. Pass the mopane worms.
New DNA chip picks out best cows. Daisy unavailable for comment.
The world’s greatest soybean farmer speaks. Did they serve tofu snacks?
Had milk?

July 26, 2008July 26, 2008

BBC takes on urban agriculture

The BBC’s One Planet programme visits Hyderabad to talk to urban vegetable growers and buffalo keepers. This seems to be part of a series. A previous programme visited Kampala. The podcasts are here. But it’s weird. I can’t find a decent, detailed description of the programme(s) online, much less a place to get transcripts. That can’t be right.

June 26, 2008

Sound news

CBC — the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation — has a new series on air called Diet for a Hungry Planet: How our World Eats. I’m busy listening to the first programme right now, and while it is pretty corny, it is also very informative. Although the focus is on Canada (and why shouldn’t it be?) the ideas being discussed are applicable everywhere. If nothing else, they’ll provoke discussion, I’m sure. Be warned, though, that if you listen direct from the browser page (as opposed to downloading a podcast version and listening to that), if you navigate away from that page the show will stop and you’ll have to go back to the beginning.