- The Tracing Paper launches a twitter round-up. UK based, and food system in general, not just agrobiodiversity, and very useful.
- Old English apples in supermarkets … in three years time, DV. Via Tracing Paper (see above)
- SPIN-Farming has a new presentation you can download to promote intensive, diverse farming.
- South African wild plants as veterinary medicines.
Saving an apple a day
The Renewing America’s Food Traditions alliance organized a Forgotten Fruits Summit on March 19th at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, Madison. According to Gary Nabhan, it was
…the first full gathering of America’s most accomplished back-country fruit explorers, veteran orchard-keepers, horticultural historians, pomological propagators, natural-born nurserymen and hard cider-makers concerned with the destiny of Malus x domestica, the single fruit most imbedded in the American identity.
The scary numbers:
- There were once 14,000 named varieties in American nurseries.
- Only some 1500 remain.
- 30 fruit nurseries are lost every year, since the late 1980’s.
Gary Nabhan and Jenny Trotter’s Forgotten Fruits Manual & Manifesto – Apples, which sets out “a plan of action to restore apple diversity to our farms, backyard orchards, restaurants and home tables” was on the table for discussion, and one of the objectives of the gathering was to develop “a strategy to assist those individuals who are doing the most to preserve American apple heritage.” The Manifesto is a very sensible mix of in situ and ex situ, NGO and government, private and public sector, young and old.
It will be interesting to see what the final strategy looks like, and to what extent it will be applicable elsewhere around the apple world. Gary does provide some hints about the direction the discussion took on his blog:
This spring, one of our honored participants, Creighton Lee Calhoun, will teach a workshop entitled “Grafting for the Future” from which each of the students will take home a tree grafted from one of the 400 varieties growing in the Southern Heritage Apple Orchard at Horne Creek Living Historic Farm near Pinnacle, North Carolina. On March 19th at Harvest Restaurant, founded by Chef Tami Lax in downtown Madison, we sampled some of the first world class hard ciders to come out of the new cideries flourishing in Great Lakes region, many of which are using heirloom apples that had once lost their markets. And we mentored a new generation of urban tree farmers and permaculturists that are bringing apples back to inner city landscapes that had altogether lost them over the last century.
I hadn’t come across the term hard cider before but it just means the alcoholic kind. Sounds like a fun meeting.
Nibbles: Adaptation, Vegetables, Wood, Allotment, Earthworms, Salmon, Bees, Malaria, Potatoes, Apples
- ICRISAT: “The impact of climate change on the yields under low input agriculture is likely to be minimal as other factors will continue to provide the overriding constraints to crop growth and yield.” So that’s all right then.
- Book and CD-ROM on African indigenous veggies.
- CD-ROM of wood characteristics.
- The agrobiodiversity of “…the oldest and largest area of detached town gardens in Britain” being surveyed. Cultivated since 1605. Wow.
- Earthworm Week! Yay!
- “This is an exciting time for salmon conservation in the Pahsimeroi.”
- Hawaiian native bees in trouble. Get in line.
- The world has a malaria map. Very cool.
- The Canary Islands tries to save its potatoes, sweet and otherwise.
- The Forgotten Fruits Summit. You heard me.
South helping North
Don’t despair if you haven’t much room — you can still get produce from plants grown in old tins and tubs on window sills or balconies.
That’s Faustino Reyes Matute from San Marcos, Honduras. Only one of the many subsistence farmers that are providing advice to allotment owners and others would-be farmers in Britain, people “who have turned to growing their own fruit and veg as the nation tightens its purse strings in the recession.” The Catholic charity Progressio is behind the great idea.
Nibbles: Aquaculture, Philippines organic, Risk mapping, Jatropha, Plum
- FAO’s Regional Aquaculture Information System (RAIS) website launched. Covers the Gulf states.
- Pinoy farmers urged to go organic.
- Climate change risk mapped in SE Asia. Cambodia surrenders.
- Local weed makes good in Mexico.
- The Prunus mume collection at the Beijing Botanic Garden.