- A letter makes some very important points about bananas in Africa. There’s a huge back-story to this, but we’re not going to go there.
- Prickly pear fruit chips. An opportunity beckons, for someone.
- Building the perfect pea.
- Half of fish farmed. But which half?
- Scientific American bee podcast.
- “…there is a whole world of microbes underground, associated with the roots of plants, that has yet to be analyzed.”
Nibbles: Honey, Bio-char, Native American agriculture
- Oh bliss. Ethiopian honey travels to Norway, sweet deal for both ends. Locavores perplexed?
- The Economist hot for bio-char.
- “Our family has farmed this land forever. We’re part of the corn, and its part of us.”
Nibbles: Bee genes, Organics, Swaminathan, Apples, Africa, Late blight, More bees, Agroforestry
- USDA screens bee genes, does not find smoking gun.
- Organic industry needs to focus on “wider benefits to avoid losing customers to other ethical issues”. Er … right.
- M.S. Swaminathan talks to the Wall Street Journal. With added video goodness.
- UK newspaper discovers the threatened home of the wild apple.
- Sustainable farming is the way forward for Africa. Course it is.
- Blight resistant potatoes. No, really. They are.
- The Barefoot Beekeeper.
- ICRAF identifies a silver-bullet tree to revive African soils.
Nibbles: Gardening, Maple syrup, Farming and conservation, Late blight, Urban guerrilla, Bizarre produce, Russian food, Aquaculture, Heirloom apples, Turkish medicinal plants, Bee-eating hornets
- NY Botanical Garden launches summer Edible Garden celebration.
- Thingy for getting more syrup out of maples invented.
- Farmer floods his fields on purpose.
- Insights into tomato late-blight resistance. Do try and keep up!
- A very English guerrilla gardener.
- Pictures of weird fruits and vegetables.
- Russian starters. Uhm, I spot a trend.
- The future of aquaculture: giant robotic roaming cages.
- Saving California’s Sebastopol Gravenstein apple.
- “Zeytinburnu Medicinal Plant Garden, opened in 2005, is Turkey’s first and only medicinal plant garden.”
- Something else has it in for bees: Chinese hornets.
Nibbles: Seed travels, Carotenoids in cucumbers, Tea and hibiscus, Sea level rise, Tewolde on climate change, SPGRC
- After a year’s travel in search of seeds, Adam Forbes turns in his report.
- The genetics of orange-fleshed cucumbers elucidated.
- Tea and hibiscus booze.
- Video of honey harvesting.
- Maps of sea level rise. All somewhat unsatisfying, somehow.
- “Because we are poor, we shall suffer first but, ultimately, we shall all die together.”
- SADC Plant Genetic Resources Centre (SPGRC) director Paul Munyenyembe does the public awareness thing.