- European are growing more vegetables. But how much of that is heirlooms?
- Canadian boffins grow wild potatoes for the leaves.
- Chinese wasp going to roast Italy’s chestnuts.
- The genetics of swine geography. Or is it the geography of swine genetics?
- The diversity of sauces.
- Cooking Flipper.
- Genetically engineered brewer’s yeast + cellulose-eating bacterium + biomass = methyl halides.
- Wild sheep runs wild in Cyrpus.
- “It can be planted in farms because it does not compete for resources with corn, coffee or bananas and acts as a nitrogen-fixing agent in the soil. The mpingo is also considered a good luck tree by the Chagga people who live on the slopes of the Mt. Kilimanjaro.”
Nibbles: Plant bombs, Reindeer and caribou, Livestock wild relatives, Agricultural geography of North Korea, Cyclone rehabilitation, AVRDC, Kew, Organic, Farmers and climate change
- Jacob alerts me that our “throw duplicates of all accessions from an airplane flying across Africa” Gedanken experiment may be closer to realization than we thought.
- Reindeer in trouble. In other news, there are 7 subspecies of the things.
- Indonesia looks to its threatened livestock wild relatives.
- Agriculture (among other things) in North Korea.
- Buffalo distributed in Myanmar. From where?
- Local vegetables promoted in the Philippines.
- More inspirational stuff on the Millennium Seed Bank from Jonathan Drori.
- Organizations Involved in Organic Plant Breeding Projects and Education. Not as many as you’d think.
- “Learning centres” helping farmers identify challenges, adapt to climate change.
Nibbles: Byssus, Crops for the Future, African horticulture, Swine, Seeds, Soils, Phosphorus
- Jeremy gets all etymological about fibres. I guess he got fed up of experimenting with fermentation. And with questioning the Wisdom of the Sachs.
- Did we mention Crops for the Future has a cool new website? Subscribe!
- “Inside Africa’s First Global Horticulture Congress“
- We missed the 5th World Congress of Dry-cured Hams. Who knew? Time did.
- In Hawaii? Got seeds to swap? Go to the Amy B. H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden in Captain Cook.
- In Australia? Want better soil? Listen to Maarten Stapper. Via.
- Phosphorus redux. You pays your money …
Go Local recognized by CDC
We’ve often referred here to the sterling efforts of Lois Englberger and the Go Local team in Pohnpei in promoting agrobiodiversity-based solutions to the many, grave health and nutrition problems afflicting Pacific Islanders. The karat banana story is only one example.
Now we hear that the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) and Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have listed the Go Local campaign as one of their success stories in reducing the burden of chronic disease across the U.S. The full list is online. Look under Federated States on Micronesia (p.29). Congratulations to the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, the NGO behind Go Local. Some of the other success stories also look interesting.
Asparagus lust
Harold McGee talks about asparagus in his latest column at the New York Times. The money quote, for agrobiodiversity enthusiasts:
According to the food scholar Alan Davidson, some 1930s French varieties produced bland spears 2 inches in diameter and more than a pound in weight. Bland or not, those sound like heirlooms worth unearthing.
Amen to that.