Category: Tourism

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Mystery of the undead Fukuoka

Fukuoka1.jpg File this one under spooky. Yesterday, walking in the Italian countryside, I spotted an unusual sign. It says, in effect, Permaculture, Fukuoka Method. How many people passing that sign would have the faintest idea what it meant? My companion had no idea who had put it up, or why. I told him briefly about Fukuoka, and he said he’d ask around among his neighbours and see what he could discover. And I took a close look at the hedge in which the sign was planted, and I couldn’t really see anything too unusual about it. A couple of apples, possibly not wildlings, brambles, rose-hips.

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The spooky part? Exactly one year ago today, we noted the death of Masanobu Fukuoka, who died a year before I snapped that sign.

Was it really a permaculture hedge? And is this something general in Italy, posting signs of this nature? Maybe someone could enlighten me.

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Thank you, Ames!

Just back from Heartland and, before the jetlag overpowers me, I really want to thank everyone at the North Central Regional Plant Introduction Station (NC7) in Ames, Iowa for their incredible hospitality over the past week. I know this will get to them because a couple of the people working at the station told me they visit us occasionally. Grateful for that too!

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The ARS facility at Ames is the oldest of the US plant introduction stations. It’s main crop is maize, of which it has a collection of about 20,000 accessions from all over the world.

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But there are also some 30,000 accessions of a bunch of other crops and wild species.

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Many of the crops require careful management of pollinators during regeneration and multiplication. Fortunately, there hasn’t been any colony collapse disorder among the beehives used and maintained on the station.

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Like many of the active genebanks of the USDA National Plant Germplasm System, the one at Ames benefits from an almost symbiotic relationship with nearby Iowa State University, with some staff also having university duties and many students gaining hands-on experience in the genebank.

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Also nearby is a fascinating prairie remnant, Doolittle Prairie, which houses about a dozen crop wild relatives. I’ll say a bit more about that in due course, but here’s what the place looks like at sunset.

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Thanks again to everyone at NC7!

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Nibbles: Red rice, Drought squared, Slow Food, Coffee, Cassava, Horses, Wheat, Ketchup

  • Saving red rice in India. Note comment from Bhuwon.
  • India again: “We have not been able to sow rice. Our corn crop has been destroyed by pests. We have nothing to eat. We have nothing to feed our cattle.”
  • Morocco: “The farmers started using more subterranean water, but that has almost been used up, putting us on a straight line to desertification.” But, “[r]esearchers have also introduced new varieties of grain that in laboratory tests have proven resistant to water stress or drought.”
  • Another Slow Food interview. Zzzzzzzzzz.
  • Cuppa weird joe?
  • IITA and others save cassava in West Africa.
  • Nice photo essay on a thoroughbred stud farm.
  • Take the wheat quiz.
  • Where is our heirloom ketchup?