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From the horse’s mouth

andyjarvis.jpg The recent paper showing that climate change threatens the wild relatives of crops received quite a bit of attention yesterday, being as how it was The International Day for Biodiversity. But even though the champagne has all gone and cake crumbs are all we have left, we decided to prolong the festivities just a little. So we called Andy Jarvis, lead author on the study and asked him to share a few thoughts. You can listen here.

You can also hear co-author Annie Lane over at Bioversity International’s news pages.

P.S. This may be the first in an occasional series of podcasts. Have you got something to say? Or would you like to hear someone or something particular? Let us know.

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People power

Here’s another potpourri, this one centred on local people’s perceptions of agricultural biodiversity. From the journal Livestock Science comes a paper looking at how traditional livestock keepers in Uganda select breeding bulls and cows among Ankole longhorn cattle. Another paper, this one from Crop Protection, discusses how Ethiopian farmers rank sorghum varieties with regard to their resistance to storage pests, and indeed what they do about such pests. And finally, from The Hindu newspaper, news of an initiative, to be launched on the International Day for Biological Diversity by the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, for a “people’s movement” to “prepare a database of all living organisms and traditional knowledge systems” in Kerala. The initiative is part of the state’s draft biodiversity strategy and action plan, which apparently includes consideration of agricultural biodiversity.

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New kids on the blog

The International Food Policy Research Institute seems to have a blog: blog world hunger. It started a while ago, by the look of things, but has lately shaken itself, rubbed the sleep from its eyes, and started wandering about the room. Alas, it needs a tweak or two. I tried to leave a comment and no matter how fast I typed it insisted my message had timed out as a result of inactivity. Maybe you’ll have better luck. There’s an ongoing discussion of agriculture and shifting climates, which seems appropriate today.

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Growing grains

Blogger Mustard Plaster has decided to delve into the magic of growing cereal grains with hull-less oats and hull-less barley. She complains that there isn’t much advice on gardening books, and she’s right. As one who has been there and done that, I can recommend only one book: “Small-Scale Grain Raising” by Gene Logsdon. And to tell the truth, even that is not much use for the gardener, although it is a fun read. Freshly ground, home grown cereals; that would take a lot of beating at breakfast time.