- “Francis Ratnieks, the UK’s only professor of apiculture, is undertaking pioneering research based on a breed of worker bee genetically programmed to keep hives clean.”
- Scaling up the Millennium Villages. Still no news on what it all means for agrobiodiversity.
- Good news for New England acorn lovers. Including the artisanal pork industry?
- The Ethiopian wolf is in trouble.
- The Crop Wild Relatives Discussion Group reaches 250 member, 200 messages. Well done.
Nibbles: Funding, Cow Gods, Ãœber Bee, Rice, Bushmeat, Oaks
- $50 million for climate change. Must be some for agricultural biodiversity. Via, which has the application forms.
- How the Egyptians came to venerate cattle.
- Building a better bee.
- Official US rice harvest forecasts 20% too high. Chinese comment: “Without rice, even the cleverest housewife cannot cook.”
- How about without bushmeat?
- IUCN lists endangered oaks. Know any ex situ collections? Tell IUCN!
Pollinator decline has no effect on global yields
Nature is reporting on a study that shows that “bees and many other insects may be in decline almost everywhere — but agriculture that depends on pollinators has been surprisingly unaffected at the global scale”. I have not seen the original paper, and I doubt that I am competent to assess it. But the report in Nature is intriguing. Using the FAO’s comprehensive dataset, Alexandra Klein and her colleagues observe no difference in yield patterns between crops pollinated by insects and other crops. There are other comparisons too, but the bottom line seems to be that local declines in yield with declining pollinators are not mirrored globally.
That’s no reason to relax, though.
Klein says her findings do not necessarily negate that idea that the world is in the throes of a pollination crisis. The data might hide how farmers have adapted to the problem, she suggests.
Nature goes on to suggest that a threshold-based catastrophe ((In the technical sense.)) may be around the corner.
Anyone care to comment on Klein’s paper? Or has Nature got it entirely right?
Honeybees no longer pampered on the Pampas
Ranching in South America tends to get a bad press because it is often associated with Amazonian deforestation, but of course there are vast swathes of the continent where it makes good environmental sense, as well as economic. ((For a discussion of the related question of the bad press that pastoralism gets, see this post in CABI’s blog, which coincidentally came out just a few hours after I posted this.)) The Pampas grasslands of Argentina are a case in point. The home of gaucho culture ((Which, incidentally, is not as homogeneous and predictable as one might think.)), the Pampas are undergoing drastic change. The soybean boom is not just having an effect on the livestock industry, but also, perhaps surprisingly, on honeymaking. Much smaller in value, no doubt, than either soybeans or livestock, but these are not times to pass up on diversification.
Nibbles: Goats, Fowl, Goats & fowl, Bees
- Kenyans turn to dairy goats.
- Ugandans advised to turn to local chickens.
- Kenyans told: “Change your old farming methods or face starvation.” Jeremy says: “I’m confused.”
- Irish bees — rescue plan. Thanks Danny.