Via our friend Lois Englberger comes news of the nth project involving orange crops, where n is a large positive integer. This one is on orange-fleshed sweet potatoes — and indeed other high beta-carotene crops — in the Solomon Islands. The International Potato Centre (CIP) has a catalogue of orange varieties for Africa. I just hope everyone is not forgetting all the other varieties.
School gardens
[I]nstead of building up and knocking down an army of straw men from a distance, Luke Tsai actually visited the [Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School in Berkeley, California] garden to see how it works and talked to the teachers and principal about the Edible Schoolyard.
What a strange idea, to go and look at something you’re reporting on and see what the people involved make of it, rather than just using your own gut feelings. But Luke Tsai did just that before he wrote about The Edible Schoolyard. Let’s hope this kind of effort never catches on. The Ethicurean wrote about Tsai’s piece and gives lots of context and links.
Tomatoes in Ghana
Cotton farmer suicides in India get all the press, but three years ago we noted briefly the apparent suicide of tomato growers in Ghana. Today sees a meeting in Accra “for a unique exchange of views on how to revive the strategic but ailing tomato sector.” Farmers, traders, processors, academics and donors will be thrashing out a more strategic approach to the tomato sector in Ghana under the watchful eye of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and IFPRI (the International Food Policy Research Institute). IFPRI anticipates that:
Improvements across the board could reduce Ghana’s reliance on low-cost imported tomato paste, improve its foreign exchange reserves, and provide employment and development opportunities in poor rural areas.
How many wins is that?
Nibbles: Biochemistry, Tree rings, Soil, Lettuce
- Supersizing crops.
- Using tree rings to study past Asian droughts. I guess it’s just me, but I find this much more intersting than the thought of tinkering with the Calvin-Benson cycle.
- The mother of all soil data sites.
- That ancient Egyptian aphrodisiac: brassica or lettuce?
- The Sheep is Life Celebration is coming. Wish I was going.
Nibbles: Consortium?, Sheep diversity, Sustainable biofuels, Agroforestry, Almonds, Chicken breeding, Restoration, More tree management, Vegetable gardening, Wheat domestication
- IRRI tries to raise $300 million for rice in Asia. Including for that genebank of theirs?
- Sheep phylogeographic genetic structure weak, but not completely absent, thank goodness.
- Examples of sustainable biofuels. No snickering at the back there.
- How to manage tree genetic resources under climate change. By some friends.
- Almonds 101.
- “…testing the genetic and immunological limits of poultry.” And then eating the results.
- Grassland restoration needs to take into account functional diversity. And DNA?
- Presentation on community forestry management in Niger. Nice story.
- Senegalese vegetable farming project uses terra preta but modern seed. Go figure.
- Ancient farmers off the hook for loss of key wheat gene. Plant breeders to blame, apparently.