Back to complete entries on the home page. That’s what you wanted — by a whopping six votes to one (with one indifferent person) — and so that’s what you’ve got. I added a large date on a light gray background to separate one day’s posting from the next. I hope that helps. And I’ve also moved the list of latest posts up high on the left, so they should be easier to scan. Remember; we live to serve, but if you don’t ask, you won’t get.
Aquaculture big in Egypt
I stumbled on a fairly recent (2006) summary of aquaculture in Africa which at first sight suggests an incredibly impressive expansion in the use of aquatic agrobiodiversity — something like a five-fold increase in tonnage in the past ten years or so. ((via Timbuktu Chronicles.)) A closer look, however, shows that most of that increase has occurred in a single country: Egypt accounted for 83% of African aquaculture production in 2004, and 42% of that was Nile tilapia. The industry does seem to be diversifying a bit in terms of species, but not much, judging by the graphs. I hope there isn’t a bust coming after this boom…
Farmers save seeds shock
A farm in Massachusetts, US, has launched its own seed bank. Red Gate Farm Seed Bank aims to:
- provide community access to quality, local seeds.
- preserve local, heritage and heirloom seed varieties.
- promote seed saving.
- develop and distribute seeds that are optimum for our unique New England soils and climate.
- collect the social histories of our local seeds.
And very worthy that is too. You can do that sort of thing in nasty quasi-dictatorial America. In freedom-loving, liberal ol’ Yurp it would be illegal.
via Grist, which adds that “with a climate on the fritz, indigenous seeds will likely play an increasingly important role in sustaining local agricultureâ€. Except, of course, that it won’t be indigenous seeds that will support local agriculture. It’ll be agricultural biodiversity from far away, adapted to a different climate.
The growing fields
From a comment here I found my way to mandevu.net and the latest post there on how farmers in Cambodia cope with unexpected conditions, complete with video. What happened was that the floods came early to the village. That destroyed most of the rice crop. So how did the villagers cope? Well, in many ways, all of which involve the careful management of rice agricultural biodiversity. But I’m not going to steal mandevu’s thunder. Go there and see for yourself.
By the way, mandevu notes he has three readers. Well, we have five or six. And I’m happy to try and send a couple his way for first hand reports from the field. We’d do that for anyone with as much interesting material. Just point it out.
Tangled Bank
The latest Tangled Bank, no 91, is up. The timing of our update on the Indian fruit genebank, published this very morning and our submission to that edition of Tangled Bank, is purely coincidental. I was happy to see Larry Moran’s debunking of the Darwin Awards, not merely because it shows again that if something is too good to be true, it is often untrue, but also because Larry has finally figured out how to submit his posts. He claims that “the people who run this carnival don’t make it easy”. I’ve no idea how he could possibly have formed that idea, but I’m glad he’s over it.
I mention that because while there are many interesting posts, there aren’t that many about our pet topic. The complexities of multiple uses of forest lands gets a good outing at Biotunes, but that’s about as far as it goes.