From the latest Tangled Bank blog carnival, a couple of relevant pieces. Felicia gives a personal account of her fascination with honeybees and there’s an account of the domestication of the dog (which I can’t seem to access). Lots more that is interesting, but not relevant to agricultural biodiversity.
Another blogger in China
Looks like Jeremy is not the only foreigner with an interest in agriculture blogging his way around China. Jim Harkness, president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy ((Based in Minneapolis, “the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.”)) “is blogging from China as he meets with experts on China’s food and farm system.” I wonder if he and Jeremy will meet up somewhere? If they do, I bet it will be at a market or banquet.
Earliest known rice?
It’s late, and I really should get to bed, but I cannot ignore my duty to inform you of a paper just published in Nature. Fire and flood management of coastal swamp enabled first rice paddy cultivation in east China by Y. Zong, Z. Chen, J. B. Innes, C. Chen, Z. Wang and H. Wang describes how, 7,700 years ago, people in the lower reaches of the Yangtze converted brackish swamps into rice paddies that remained pretty productive for a couple of hundred years until the sea upped and swallowed the area. There’s a lot more to be gleaned from the paper, which is probably behind a paywall (I can’t check) but will nevertheless be picked up around the world. I’ll look out for a story in the China Daily tomorrow.
Later … Nothing I could see in the paper here, but the LA Times and National Geographic have more.
Down on the levee
A riverine trifecta today, describing threats to the biodiversity — including agrobiodiversity — associated with major rivers around the world…
From Italy, news that students and teachers from the University of Gastronomic Sciences at Pollenzo (founded in 2004 by Slow Food guru Carlo Petrini) — over 150 of them — Â will travel down the Po River watershed by bicycle and boat in September and October. They’ll be giving the river and its valley a source-to-delta checkup, they say, diagnosing their ills but also identifying their abiding strengths — ecological, cultural and, presumably, agricultural.
Further east, Hubert von Goisern, an Austrian musician, has done something similar — but in his own way — for the Danube. He’s spent the summer giving a series of concerts down the river for a WWF campaign to raise awareness of the damage that planned development projects will do to the habitat of the Danube sturgeon. Plans to straighten and deepen the course of the river to facilitate shipping are expected to affect a thousand-kilometer stretch, destroying a unique natural and cultural heritage.
And further east still, Nguyen Huu Chgiem, the son of a Mekong delta rice farmer, reflects on how climate change, deforestation and saltwater intrusion are affecting Vietnam’s “rice basket.” And what he can do about it now that he’s a professor of environment and natural resources management.
Food politics links
There are links to a whole bunch of interesting stuff on “Why our food choices matter” on bookforum.com today.