Policy

Nibbles: Chilli, Extension, Africa, Genebank, Potatoes, War, Angora

Cool new use for hot peppers: fungicides, for agriculture and human health.
Community Knowledge Workers transformed into “Mobile Banana Disease Monitors”.
Grain “call[s] on African peasants to resist and protect their agriculture, as they have always done”.
Near Corvallis, Ore, USA? Wanna tour the genebank? Wanna write it up for us?
New World Catalogue of Potato Varieties. A pedant asks: “Any Old World varieties in there?”
Germany is said to be demanding entire Rumanian wheat crop, also part of what is left over from 1938 crop. Orwell’s approaching war.
Saving the Angora goat in the US.

Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture mourns loss of agricultural biodiversity, issues report.
Monsanto “shares with farmers the science behind the technology.” Nice of them.
Thailand patents (transgenic) jasmine rice to “keep foreigners out of our paddy fields.” So much to say about this, so little time.

“In the face of climate change, keeping diverse, resilient ecosystems is one of the strongest tools for adaptation.”
Getting high in Eden.
Chinese ate freshwater fish 40,000 years ago.
British MPs finish cleaning their moats, decide to save the honeybee.
Worm power!
LEISA 25:2 is out.
Przewalski’s horse gets first ever reverse vasectomy.
Early farmers used camel-drawn carts.
Using Google Earth to map bunnies in Australia. And then kill them.
Farming the savannah. What could go wrong?
Stressed out? Try kava. With audio goodness.

Oldest rice research facility in Western Hemisphere turns 100.
ICRISAT DG plugs his genebank, says “India should start investing for the long-term sustainability of the farming sector particularly in dryland agriculture.”
Seed-saving in Arkansas.
The Archaeobotanist reviews rice domestication. And again.
Nordics to discuss how to develop products based on local livestock breeds.