- Fungus eats bats that eat insects that eat crops.
- Bacteria in crops make rain. Enough of this weirdness!
- One moose or two?
Reindeer game up
The species Rangifer tarandus is divided into seven subspecies, but all are in trouble, according to a survey of their status published in a recent paper in Global Change Biology. We’re talking about the animals that are usually called reindeer in Europe and caribou in North America. All across their circum-polar range their populations are undergoing an unprecedented synchronous decline (red denotes herds in decline in the map below, which I hacked from the BBC article quoted below, green indicates those on the increase and dark grey means no data is available).
One subspecies — R. t. tarandus — comprises the semi-domestic and wild reindeer that live across northern Scandinavia and Russia and are so important to the Sami people and others. Here’s one of the authors quoted by the BBC on the causes of the decline:
“If global climate change and industrial development continue at the current pace, caribou and reindeer populations will continue to decline in abundance,” says Vors.
“Currently, climate change is most important for Arctic caribou and reindeer, while anthropogenic landscape change is most important for non-migratory woodland caribou.”
Interestingly, reindeer were recently re-introduced to Britain after a gap of 800 years. I guess their long-term future there must be in question.
The politics of toddy
Coconut farmers receive Toddy Movement members released on bail.
That’s the intriguing title of a short piece from Tamil Nadu on the NewKerala.com website. It turns out that dozens of farmers had been thrown in jail a few days ago for tapping coconut toddy without the permission of the state government. The farmers claim that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has reneged on an election promise to rethink the ban on toddy in force in the state. So they started tapping and selling the beverage in their fields in protest. The reaction seemed a bit heavy-handed to me, but apparently toddy is a bit of a political hot potato (as it were) in Tamil Nadu:
In Tamil Nadu, this beverage is currently banned, though the legality fluctuates with politics. In the absence of legal toddy, moonshine distillers of arrack often sell methanol-contaminated alcohol, which can have lethal consequences. To discourage this practice, authorities have pushed for inexpensive “Indian Made Foreign Liquor” (IMFL), much to the dismay of toddy tappers.
Last year the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Tamil Nadu government to prohibit the manufacture, sale and consumption of toddy in the state (there is no ban in other states). The Chief Justice explained the decision in part thus:
“it is a policy decision of the State government. There is no fundamental right to manufacture or trade in liquor. The problem with toddy is it affects ordinary people in villages. Whisky or other liquor is not easily accessible to the common man.”
So that’s allright then. Now, the statement made in an article in The Hindu a few years back about the consequences of the ban for rural livelihoods may be a bit exaggerated:
The Salem district unit of National Agriculturalists Awareness Movement (NAAM) staged a demonstration here on Friday asking the State Government to allow toddy tapping… They said the denial of toddy tapping had ushered in poverty in rural areas.
But toddy must represent a significant contribution to the income of thousands of farming families — and no doubt has done for generations. And the ban may well be contributing to the disappearance of specialized coconut types. Why replant and tend varieties favoured for toddy if you can’t make the stuff?
Go on, Chief Minister Karunanidhi: legalize it!
Nibbles: Plant bombs, Reindeer and caribou, Livestock wild relatives, Agricultural geography of North Korea, Cyclone rehabilitation, AVRDC, Kew, Organic, Farmers and climate change
- Jacob alerts me that our “throw duplicates of all accessions from an airplane flying across Africa” Gedanken experiment may be closer to realization than we thought.
- Reindeer in trouble. In other news, there are 7 subspecies of the things.
- Indonesia looks to its threatened livestock wild relatives.
- Agriculture (among other things) in North Korea.
- Buffalo distributed in Myanmar. From where?
- Local vegetables promoted in the Philippines.
- More inspirational stuff on the Millennium Seed Bank from Jonathan Drori.
- Organizations Involved in Organic Plant Breeding Projects and Education. Not as many as you’d think.
- “Learning centres” helping farmers identify challenges, adapt to climate change.
Striga beater awarded 2009 World Food Prize
Dr Gebisa Ejeta of Purdue University has won this year’s World Food Prize for his work on sorghum breeding, in particular breeding for resistance to the parasitic weed Striga.
Dr. Ejeta’s scientific breakthroughs in breeding drought-tolerant and Striga-resistant sorghum have been combined with his persistent efforts to foster economic development and the empowerment of subsistence farmers through the creation of agricultural enterprises in rural Africa. He has led his colleagues in working with national and local authorities and nongovernmental agencies so that smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs can catalyze efforts to improve crop productivity, strengthen nutritional security, increase the value of agricultural products, and boost the profitability of agricultural enterprise — thus fostering profound impacts on lives and livelihoods on broader scale across the African continent.
Couldn’t have happened to a nicer person either. Congratulations, Dr Ejeta.