- Compare and contrast the banana and the Big Mac. Dan Koeppel takes it to the masses.
- Lamenting the loss of “amber waves of grain”. Ingrate.
- Cameroon’s agriculture vulnerable to climate change. I’ll alert the media.
- Look what I got you for National Pollinator Week next week; a World Checklist of Bees. Neat-o.
- Celebrate food and farmers in Eden.
- “The core of the strategy is a short-term provision of improved seeds suited to the local environment and fertilizers like Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP) and urea accompanied by advice on how to use them.” Sounds familiar…
- Meanwhile, in non-Millennium Villages: “While his maize cobs were smaller than others, the seed was of a much higher quality; the fibre of his cotton was also much longer.”
- Japanese yam fields in peril. Yams as in Dioscorea or sweet potato or what? So annoying.
- Neolithic myths?
- California apricot grower explores Central Asia, comes up trumps. Jeremy comments: CandyCots? I think I want to be sick.
Nibbles: No-dig, Joe, Gritty Veg, Insect food, Forests, Finger millet, Bees
- No-dig, (almost) no-water surplus veggies in Lala land. Via.
- Smell the coffee and wake up.
- Yet more urban agriculture reviving neighbourhood culture.
- Giant grasshopper is good for you.
- And speaking of Google Earth (see below): you can use it to track disappearing forests as well as disappearing gourds.
- “Our mother who grinds ragi at home is far more superior to our father who rules this country.” Finger millet makes a comeback in India.
- Aussie report urges honey bee protection. Good on ya, mate.
Nibbles: Potato, Cheese, Edible landscapes, Apples, Bees, Cacao, Vegetables
- The Guardian has a leader on the potato. Please let this year end soon. And thanks, Danny.
- Lucy Appleby RIP.
- Inner city farming in the UK.
- Gary Nabhan on where apples came from, and where they’re going. And more. Thanks again, Danny!
- Tracking bees’ response to climate change by satellite.
- Mars thinks cacao biodiversity is important. No news from Earth.
- The “keyhole gardens” of Lesotho.
Pollinator diversity, pollination services and landscape change
That’s the title (or part of it) of a guest editorial 1 in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Ecology which introduces a Special Profile entitled “Pollination and Pollinators” (mainly bees, actually).
The papers in this Special Profile cover several of these topics: two papers address the impact of habitat fragmentation and semi-natural landscape elements for population densities, species richness and community composition of bees (Brosi et al. 2008; Osborne et al. 2008). The next three papers focus on the combined effects of local and landscape-scale land use intensity and semi-natural or natural landscape elements on pollinators (Kohler et al. 2008; Rundlöf, Bengtsson & Smith 2008; Winfree et al. 2008). The last two papers focus on pollination functions and consider cross-pollination rates in a major crop (Devaux et al. 2008) and plant–pollinator networks in heathlands (Forup et al. 2008).
The papers are behind paywalls, but the abstracts are still quite useful.
I guess the overall message is that “land use intensification and habitat fragmentation do not only affect pollinator diversity and abundance, but also pollination services” because “pollination success of insect-pollinated plant species is usually not dependent on single, highly specialized pollinator species, but rather on a diverse community of pollinators.” In some places, of course, bees have lots more to contend with.
Nibbles: Drugs, Cotton, Localsource, Bees, Sunflowers
- Insights into Dutch cannabis breeding. Dude unavailable for comment.
- Cotton diversity link-fest.
- Head of World Food Programme on buying locally.
- US bee health: not good. Via.
- Australian sunflowers to improve US varieties; Luigi more confused than ever.