- Rhubarb safe at long last. Rejoice! The BBC does, sort of.
- Biodiversidad Mexicana website lists plants with centres of origin/diversity in that country, with references.
- Sometimes agrobiodiversity is downright bad for you.
- And here’s today’s story on the “organic” urban vegetable gardens of Havana.
- But China?
- Oh, and, apparently, the US midwest too. And they just had a conference there.
Where will all those vegetable seeds come from?
I haven’t seen official figures on production or acreage — I’m not even sure if they exist — but if internet buzz and celebrity hype is anything to go by we’ve clearly been going through a revolution in vegetable gardening during the past couple of years. Well, would you believe a resurgence of interest? Schools are certainly interested. Michelle Obama is, famously, interested. The next step will no doubt be the digging of tilapia ponds on the White House lawn.
Just today there were pieces on this from the US and the UK. But what I would really be interested to know is to what extent all these “new” gardeners, including the First Lady, are using heirloom seeds. Is there demand for them? And if so, is it being met by supply?
The Royal Horticultural Society has put out a call for heirloom vegetable seeds in Wales. Is it because it fears for their continued existence, or because enough seed is not available to meet sky-rocketing requests?
Seeds discovered through the scheme will be redistributed through local seed-swaps and also through the Heritage Seed Library run by Garden Organic in Coventry.
Given the recent news about the “official” national vegetables genebank in the UK, one does have to be thankful for things like the Heritage Seed Library, and its American cousin Native Seed Search. Maybe Michelle can be persuaded to Adopt-a-Crop.
Fishy business
Is it me or has there been a lot on the tubes about aquaponics lately? There was the thing about growing cucumbers and fish in the badlands of Alberta. And that other thing about shivering tilapia in a backyard Thunderdome in the middle of snow-bound rural Connecticut. Classes in the subject at the New Vista High School. A youtube channel. And a blog, natch. Maybe it’s time to dust off those utopian visions of urban fish farms vertically integrated with up-market sushi restaurants.
Nibbles: Seed saving, Hard graft, Urban Ag, Sandwiches, Chickens
- Psst, wanna save some seeds? Maybe do a little breeding on the side. USDA has some sites for you. NSFW.
- Patrick grafts citrus — after, er, sidestepping genebank authorization hell.
- Got an article on Best Practices in Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture Development? JAFSCD wants it.
- Scanwiches. Really. Diversity in bread. h/t Cleek. (Hey, it’s a slowish day.)
- Backyard chickens: an art, a science, a social movement. An exhibition. At cornell.
Nibbles: GIPB, NPGS, Dogs for conservation, Harare gardens, Goat milk value added, Equator Prize, Humanitarian relief, Peruvian maize, Pseudo-cereals, Katine, Vavilov goes web 2.0, Travel, Haggis ban, African road datasets, Dyes, Adaptation pix, Baltic, AnGR, Jatropha
- GIPB revamps its website. Knowledge Resource Centre is ver. 4.0, no less.
- US National Plant Germplasm System explained to Canadians. Why? They have their own!
- Armadillo sniffing dogs.
- More urban farming in Zimbabwe.
- Interesting stuff you can make with goat milk.
- Who do you like for Equator Prize 2010? Avatar? No, wait, that’s something else. Well, actually…
- Nutrition for humanitarian workers.
- Large-eared white maize is ‘cultural heritage’ of Peru. So that’s all good then.
- Minor cereals and a gluten-free diet.
- Wanna talk to Katine? Ask about what the project is doing with/about agrobiodiversity, of course!
- Nikolay tweets!
- Agricultural and other assorted musings along the Mekong. Can’t help thinking that if you somehow aggregated all similar observations and geo-referenced them you’d come up with a pretty interesting picture of agriculture worldwide.
- A blow for Scottish agrobiodiversity and cuisine.
- Digitizing Africa’s roads.
- Natural dyes 101.
- IUCN photos of climate change adaptation. Includes agriculture! Well, sort of.
- Nordic agricultural scientists to discuss climate change adaptation. Grow bananas?
- Breeding Strategies for Sustainable Management of Animal Genetic Resources from FAO. Via.
- ATREE questions Jatropha.