- The CGIAR Consortium finds a CGIAR success story. While the Guardian does another.
- Talk on honeybee diversity at UC Davis. Hopefully Robert will be available for comment. Meanwhile, across the Pond…
- Seeing the food security for the trees.
- Yeah I’m just not sure it’s such a good idea to name a new avocado variety Uzi, no matter how good it may be.
- Deconstructing the global land rush. And here’s the data… Jatropha everywhere.
- The deep roots of globalization. Move over jatropha.
- More on that paper on how to recognize a relatively drought-tolerant species.
- All tangled up in natural fibres.
- How to read organic agriculture debates. Just in case you actually want to read them.
- An Indian prepares for the Convention on Biological Diversity‘s meeting in Hyderabad in October. Not too early, is it?
- Bean breeders! Funding alert! You have nothing to lose but your diversity.
- India posts world record rice harvest — using System of Rice Intensification. Take that, doubters.
Nibbles: Fungi, Pastoralism, Climate hoofprints, Ancient farmers, Pineberry, Yellow Rust, Rio+20
- Mushrooms in Art: why, and what good has it been.
- Keep moving that livestock; it’s more profitable.
- And … noted promiscuous communication expert confuses cow and elephant in search of livestock’s climate hoofprint.
- Best blog account of those Swedish farmers from Cyprus.
- Back to the strawberry’s future: meet the pineberry.
- Too late for Robigalia, yellow rust threatens triticale.
- Lecture of Dr Maurits van den Berg – “The future of land”. You’ll get nothing from the link, but the presentation made me wish I’d been there.
Organic vs Industrial ag: lotta continua
You’ll have seen bits of the hoohah surrounding the meta-analysis of organic agriculture published in Nature. Having nothing to add, I’m very content to reblog this, from Big Picture Agriculture.
My biggest complaint with these Foley papers in the journal Nature is that they ignore the unsustainable energy inputs for industrial ag, and I’ve said so before. Today, the coverage of this new study is splashed across headlines everywhere, most of the headlines stating that organic production under-performs industrial production. While this is obviously a complex subject, the main point in the conclusion of this study is that the calorie-dense grains have higher yields using industrial production methods. I preferred the way the LAT presented the paper: Organic farming, carefully done, can be efficient. Organic agriculture produces smaller harvests than conventional methods, but the difference can be minimized by employing the right techniques, a study finds. (LATimes) Here is the Nature paper link.
Nibbles: Urban cows, Nutrition conference, Island conservation, Chaffey, Uganda rice collecting, Heirloom prize tomato, Metrics, Investing
- Breeding cows for cities. What about the ones that are already there? Oh and happy birthday, Susan!
- Nutritionists meet. Will they discuss diversity?
- Conservation on islands: Bermuda and Malta.
- Plant Cuttings. Rejoice.
- Rice collected in Uganda to be in the ITPGRFA’s Multilateral System. Was there ever a doubt?
- ‘Amish Destor’ tomato wins big.
- Metrics for Biodiversity is not about what you imagine it ought to be about. (So why link to it? To keep ’em honest.)
- Investing in natural alternatives offers excellent returns … and for agriculture?
Nibbles: Data visualization, Soil, Heirlooms, Organic, Bugs, Veggies, Rome, AnGR, Meat, Mexico, Date palm pollination
- Cool infographics on food, trade and, well, a particular sort of trade. And how to make your own.
- Soil would be a cool place to start.
- The bananas of your grandchildren and the carrots of your grandparents. Plus a funny peculiar idea about how to keep seed of such stuff for 50 years.
- Which you don’t need to do anyway because “[r]eplacing traditional seeds with commercial varieties is not an official government policy,” at least in South Africa. Unlike in the EU, I guess. Oooooh, did I just say that? Such a naughty muppet.
- Ok, let me make up for that with some thoughts on breeding for the sorts of places where those traditional seeds might be found, in Africa and in Europe.
- Of course, in such places, you have to know your aphids. Before they go and eat a bacteria and change their DNA. Tricky to breed for resistance to that, I would guess.
- Oh, but here are also the views of someone in Europe who would rather not have anything to do with traditional seeds and their accompanying aphids at all. Why can’t we just get along?
- Why, for example, can we all not get to love mboga za watu wa Pwani. You heard me. And no, residing far from the Swahili Coast is no excuse. Jeremy unavailable for comment.
- He did, however, point out that “[t]he value of male prostitutes exceeds that of farmlands.” Yep, Robigalia time again.
- Meanwhile, not far from the Swahili Coast, some people are thinking that man does not live by mboga alone… No, he must have nyama too.
- And speaking of which: giving sausages a name. On this, I am with Bismarck. No such porky nonsense from the French.
- “Nine thousand years of Mexican agriculture” online. And five hundred on the stove.
- Pollinating date palms just got a whole lot easier. And no, this doesn’t have anything to do with any of the other nibbles, but I thought it was cool.