Want proof that sustainable agriculture is firmly on the radar of the mainstream press? Newsweek has a piece this week on how Andean potato farmers are adapting to climate change. While Time sings an ode to the American “urban agricultural boom.”
Mangroves all over the place
For some reason, there’s been a spate of mangrove stories lately. First there was a PNAS paper about the value of Mexican mangroves. That’s behind a paywall, but it was enthusiastically picked up, including by National Geographic and SciDevNet. ((Not to mention Kazinform.)) The latter followed-up with a story about mangrove planting not being done right in the Philippines, based on a paper in Wetlands Ecology and Management. That was also widely picked up, and occasionally given a local slant, as for example in Abu Dhabi. Yesterday there was a story from Fiji. And there have been questions in the Pakistani parliament.
Maybe the media interest has to do with the International Wetlands Conference, which just closed in Brazil. Predictably, participants
…warn[ed] against creating energy and food croplands at the expense of natural vegetation and of carelessly allowing agriculture to encroach on wetlands, which causes damage through sediment, fertilizer and pesticide pollution.
But of course there’s a lot of agriculture that takes place within wetlands:
A recent study shows a large wetland in arid northern Nigeria yielded an economic benefit in fish, firewood, cattle grazing lands and natural crop irrigation 30 times greater than the yield of water being diverted from the wetland into a costly irrigation project.
And climate change is expected to have a devastating effect:
According to South African research, an estimated 1 to 2 million rural poor in that country alone could be displaced as wetlands dry up, placing further strain on urban centres to create accommodation and employment.
Fennel prices on the go
We have blogged a number of times about the use of mobile telephony to lubricate markets. But the examples have usually been from developing countries. Now here’s one from Italy. And no, I don’t want to get into a discussion about the development status of il Bel Paese. If you register with SMS Consumatori, you can send them a text message containing the name of a product and they’ll send you one back in seconds with the average prices of that product in different parts of the country.
I tried it, and it works. Today the retail cost of 1 kg of finocchio (fennel) was € 1.85 in the north and € 1.30 in the south, for example. If someone is selling something at what you think are inflated prices, you can report them online. The website has a graph of prices for each product over the past few days. And each product also has a sort of descriptive fiche, which even lists the main varieties for some fruits and vegetables, though the price is not disaggregated by variety, alas. Here’s the information on fennel varieties:
… il Bianco Perfezione (varietà precoce, la raccolta avviene in luglio e agosto), il Gigante di Napoli, il finocchio di Sicilia e il finocchio di Parma (varietà invernale, raccolta da settembre a dicembre). Ricordiamo inoltre il Bianco dolce di Firenze, il Finocchio di fracchia, e il Tondo romano. I venditori usano distinguere i finocchi in maschi e femmine: non c’è nulla di scientifico in questo, fanno semplicemente riferimento alla forma che, nel caso del maschio è tondeggiante, nella femmina più allungata.
Ok, I’ll translate:
… White Perfection (an early variety, harvested in July and August), Neapolitan Giant, Sicilian Fennel and Parma Fennel (a winter variety, harvested from September to December). Let us also remember Florentine Sweet White, Fracchia’s Fennel, and Roman Round. Sellers distinguish between male and female types, but there is nothing scientific about this, it simply refers to the shape, which is rounder in the male and more elongated in the female.
Plants don’t get enough respect
That’s not our view. Well, it is, but you know what I mean. It’s the view of über-blogger P.Z. Myers, the man with a cracker in his mouth and a price on his head. PZ stepped manfully into the breach when the scheduled compiler of the Tangled Bank Carnival of the Vanities was diagnosed with a serious illness ((Best of luck, Jeff.)) and so Tangled Bank 110 is back where it started, at PZ Myers’ Pharyngula.
Luigi’s rumination on La Zucca was apparently the “sole entry from the vast field of botany” and it wasn’t that long a post either.
There’s some stuff over there about birds and other animals that eat plants.
And if you think plants get short shrift, consider agriculture. sometimes we do feel we are wandering in the wilderness, but at least this Tangled Bank seems to have smoked out some quasi-useful comments on Luigi’s missing potato dish. So, welcome, and thanks again PZ.
BBC takes on urban agriculture
The BBC’s One Planet programme visits Hyderabad to talk to urban vegetable growers and buffalo keepers. This seems to be part of a series. A previous programme visited Kampala. The podcasts are here. But it’s weird. I can’t find a decent, detailed description of the programme(s) online, much less a place to get transcripts. That can’t be right.