- Going nuts in Kyrgyzstan. Ok, sorry, that should read growing. And something similar from Brazil.
- And the bad Ug99 news just keeps on coming. When is wheat gonna catch a break?
- The Campesino a Campesino Pollinator Project. I just love that title.
- Study says “drought tolerant maize will greatly benefit African farmers.” Still no cure for cancer.
- Araticum, Buriti, Pequi, Cagaita, Gueroba, Babassu, Baru: Which one is the next kiwi?
Nibbles: Yams, AnGR, Intensification
- One of the top 10 species described in 2009 is a yam. Yeah, I didn’t believe it either.
- ILRI video on why it’s important to conserve livestock genetic diversity.
- Edible Geography does the sort of deconstruction of Radical Cartography’s agricultural history maps that I was hoping to do but probably wouldn’t have been able to.
Nibbles: Land lease, Maasai flexibility, Small farms, Coffee, coffee, coffee, Climate change, Sahelian trees, Food as drugs, Field genebanks, Chinese medicinals, Bolivian NTFP, Invasives
- Dinka men despise manual labour, hence “southern Sudan might soon be on the block for having a lot of its potential farm land leased to, and worked by, foreigners”.
- Maasai, on the other hand, “diversifying into cropping, by keeping fewer and faster growing animals and … taking on paying jobs”. Takes all sorts.
- What is a small farm? Depends.
- Coffee contains insecticides. Who knew?
- Global Coffee Quality Research Initiative (GCQRI) launched.
- Central America’s coffee lands to shrink under climate change, Reuters reports. Enough! I’ve got the shakes.
- Africa, meanwhile, needs technological innovations to cope.
- Domesticating baobab. You know it makes sense.
- Take two snacks in the morning and call me if you don’t feel any better.
- Climate change will affect Portuguese ex situ plant conservation sites too.
- “How best can communities conserve their medicinal plants?” A case study from China.
- Bolivia could make more of its Araceae and Bromeliaceae. Couldn’t we all?
- Are protected areas in Africa harbouring crop wild relatives? Just kidding: it’s invasives IUCN is talking about.
Nibbles: Medicinal plants, Nabhan, Wildlife
- Hang on, there’s a “revised and updated” Global Strategy for Plant Conservation. When did that happen?
- Gary Nabhan on following in Vavilov’s footsteps. You can hear him in person in Rome this Friday.
- Can you protect both agriculture and wildlife? Apparently so.
Nibbles: Sorghum and rice and climate change, Pacific agrobiodiversity today and yesterday, Japanese microbiota, Wolf domestication, Organic and fungi, Crop wild relatives, Bees, Hunger, Silk
- Sorghum going to need a hand in India. Rice in China? Maybe not so much.
- Photos of the 6th Annual Hawaii Seed Exchange.
- More Pacific stuff: 3000-year-old Lapita chickens were haplogroup E, “a geographically widespread major haplogroup consisting of European, Middle Eastern, Indian, and Chinese domestic chickens.”
- More on that thing about the gut biota being adapted to ethnic diets.
- Wolves may have been turned into dogs earlier than previously thought.
- Organic farming good for underground mutualists. Which sounds totally appropriate somehow.
- Crop wild relatives: all you ever needed to know.
- Bring back bees by bringing back the boy scout bee-keeping badge.
- Here’s a weird one. US to cut 1.5 trillion calories from food by 2015. And there are 1 billion hungry. You do the math.
- Farmers rear endemic moths on intercropped host plants for high quality silk in Madagascar. Enough hot buttons in there for ya?