- “On the contrary, ‘doesn’t come true from seed’ is another way of saying ‘has lots of exciting diversity’.” Rebsie rounds up her tomatoes.
- Domestication of African rice explored at the Vaviblog.
- Entebbe Botanical Gardens has a genebank. That’s all I know.
- Roland continues to dream of a South Sea genebank paradise; one island, one coconut variety.
- “Cary Fowler explains the vital importance of crop wild relatives to address the future challenges to agriculture,” it says at the Trust website.
- Let them eat bread. Foreign Affairs on food riots. h/t Rachel, who has some interesting things to say on the subject.
- Fascinating behind the scenes insights into Economic Botany collections at Kew and elsewhere.
Gardens of peace and reconciliation in Bosnia and Herzegovina
The project isn’t just about food – reconciliation and the regaining of trust are equally important. We’re working with people who suffered a lot during the war and our main goal is to bring conflicting sides together. We’ve tried to make a secure space where thoughts and opinions can be exchanged freely; somewhere people can be useful to both the community and their families.
The secure space is in urban gardens. Great idea.
The link to the Community Gardens Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina is wrong in the article. You can find them at their website and on Facebook. Go support them, even just by making seed donations.
Nibbles: School gardens, Food Policy, Beer
- Download a book on how to create an outdoor classroom school garden.
- Ars Technica reports on a How to feed 9 billion panel discussion.
- How Ancient Brits brewed beer.
Promote better nutrition and self-sufficiency with a few clicks
The Cooperative Society in the UK recently launched a scheme called Join the Revolution. People submit projects and other people vote for them. Winners get money — GBP 5000 — towards their project.
A project I already knew about alerted me and asked me to vote, which I have done even though, to be perfectly honest, the proposal didn’t exactly set the heart aflutter. There’s another project in similar vein that is currently doing better, so I won’t link to that, but it isn’t hard to scan all the submissions and pick the revolution you would most like to foment. In fact, you’re allowed to vote for as many as you want, which seems a little odd. On the other hand, having clicked the few times needed to register on the site, it seems wasteful not to vote often.
There are some videos about projects which, I think, were funded in an earlier round. Here’s one I could relate to.
Are there any other Coop-funded revolutions we should promote? Other competitions?
African indigenous vegetables information published
Notice of the publication of the new book “African Indigenous Vegetables in Urban Agriculture” by Earthscan allows me to point out that Bioversity has also just published a study of the impact of its interventions in that area of agrobiodiversity.