African protected areas surveyed

The EU-funded “Assessment of African Protected Areas” is out:

The purpose of the work is to provide to decision makers a regularly updated tool to assess the state of Africa PAs and to prioritize them according to biodiversity values and threats so as to support decision making and fund allocation processes.

It is great stuff: detailed, standardized descriptions of the importance of — and threats faced by — each protected area in Africa. I wonder if something similar will ever be done for agricultural biodiversity. An interesting first step might be to mash these results with those of the recent survey of crop wild relatives in protected areas. Unfortunately, the agrobiodiversity and protected areas communities hardly ever speak to each other.

Research on crofting reveals oppression, not much else

A few days ago a short article in the Farmers Guardian, a British rural newspaper, mentioned what sounds like an interesting research project: “Crofters: Indigenous People of the Highlands and Islands.” Unfortunately, a look at the Scottish Crofting Foundation website doesn’t reveal much more information. It would have been nice to know, for example, whether the project looked at the contribution crofters make to on-farm conservation of agrobiodiversity. Surely there was more to the project than a glossy brochure moaning about the oppression of indigenous crofters. Maybe Maria Scholten will be able to tell us.

Meanwhile, in another part of darkest Britain, another traditional lifestyle based on the management and use of agricultural biodiversity — thatching — is having to go through bureaucratic hoops. I’ll let Danny over at Rurality tell you all about it. Would be funny if it wasn’t sad. Traditional doesn’t mean unchanging, guys.

Nibbles: Carnival, farmer schools, zero-till, drought, barley, ag college, organic choc, ICTs

Nibbles: AGRA, Andean potatoes, farmer factsheets, tequila, Dogon, yak milk