- Friday was International Day of the World’s Indigenous People. Let one post on Indigenous Peoples and the Diversity of Food represent them all. (But isn’t that coffee in the photo?)
- And yesterday was 23 Thermidor, AKA Lentil Day, in the French Republican Calendar. In other news, “Every day of the French Republican Calendar was associated with a different plant, animal, agricultural tool, etc., both to replace the custom of saints’ days and to celebrate the agricultural and natural world.”
- Today brings notice of a contest to “showcase projects from around the globe that have bridged gaps between agriculture, food security, and nutrition”. Details from Secure Nutrition.
- Growing greens — even exotic kale — in Kibera, Nairobi, would surely be a worthy winner.
- Not so sure about the photo story of Combat farming in Afghanistan, (via Metafilter) which seems to be oblivious to the number one cash crop in those parts.
Nibbles: Feed lots, Tom Wagner, Ag Game, Cereal maps, Climate change, All change, Bananas extinct?, Permaculture course, Criminal urban ag, IPRs and GMOs
- Feed lots, from the ever-wonderful Nicola Twilley – is the first of our eye-openers.
- Bifurcated carrots is hosting a PDF profile of Tom Wagner, prolific breeder of tomatoes and potatoes.
- Katherine McDonald is keen on a farming simulator game. Games? Who has time? Maybe this weekend.
- 1969 maps of cereals in India. I’d love to see them updated. A project for …
- … Jacob van Etten. He and Emile Frison say that “Harnessing Diversity by Connecting People is the Key to Climate Adaptation in Agriculture”.
- On Dr Frison’s last day as DG of Bioversity International. So, farewell then …
- … the banana. Pat Heslop-Harrison consulted by BBC’s The Food Programme. Here’s his take on Bananas and their future.
- Cornell University is offering an online course in permaculture design.
- Wouldn’t it be cool if the city planners in Los Angeles decriminalized urban agriculture?
- Grist gets to grips with the locks that imprison GMO research – real and imaginary.
When urban agriculture goes wrong
Bits of the interwebs are all aflutter over a report claiming that “Hundreds of unwanted backyard chickens are ending up at animal shelters“.
One commentator, whom I respect, said:
The headline is wrong. It isn’t hundreds, it’s thousands of chickens.
This is one of the things that irritates me about these so-called ‘urban farmers’. A lot of them have no idea what they’re getting into, and aren’t prepared to deal with the consequences. They don’t know how to properly care for them, don’t understand their health needs, don’t understand what chickens eat, and as soon as the chicken becomes inconvenient, get rid of it.
That’s a bit sweeping for my taste, but I do know where he’s coming from. I also smell the enticing aroma of a slow-simmered business opportunity.
I am quite sure the urban “farmers” would pay — maybe only 50 cents, but still — for someone to remove those birds. You could show up in a chickenshit neighbourhood once a month or so in a big old van to collect the birds and a small “handling fee”. Take the birds back to base, slaughter them and use them to prepare fine chicken stock, then sell the stock back to the people who sold you the chickens.
What could possibly go wrong?
Nibbles: Urban agriculture edition
- Urban Agriculture Edition. New Orleans, with a twist.
- Tokyo.
- Los Angeles.
- By design.
- Sydney.
- Detroit.
- Vintage.
- Very early.
- Not.
Nibbles: Cornell & Stanford videos, Harbarium data, Urban food, Wine and conservation, Gujarat community seedbanks, Big Shots, Davis breeding
- Cornell has some really cool videos online, including on agriculture. And a nice short one from Stanford about that paper on exposure to high temperatures.
- Getting an herbarium online.
- Urban food plants go online.
- For wine growers, conservation should include growing obscure varieties. Which you can find online.
- Gujarat farmers don’t need to go online to save seeds. But they could. They really could.
- POTUS comes face to face with biofortified sweet potato, likes what he sees. Same for Bill Gates and pigeonpea.
- UCDavis has a course on programme management for plant breeders. No, not online. Not clear if it’s part of that African Plant Breeding Academy thing.