Since we’re talking about blogs, here’s another great one: Agricultural Information News from IAALD, maintained by Peter Ballantyne. IAALD is the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists. Not specifically about agrobiodiversity, but many of the postings will be very relevant. Here’s an example. Peter links to an article in the People’s Daily Online about how Chinese farmers are signing up to receive sound and text messages on their phones and are also visiting a new web site, all to receive – and also to give out – advice, technical guidance and production information. No reason why that shouldn’t include information about new varieties, threats to genetic diversity, new ways to promote local crops etc., is there?
Setting the bar
And here’s another fun blog which the one mentioned in the previous post alerted me to. “The Barcode Blog” is “about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery.” It’s been going for a couple of years but a quick search revealed only one agriculture-related posting, which had to do with the use of barcoding to identify pests and invasives. But I suspect that will change.
Legal eagle
I’ve just come across a blog maintained by Kathryn Garforth, a research fellow with the International Sustainable Biodiversity Law programme of the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law (CISDL) who describes herself as “an independent legal researcher and consultant working in the areas of biodiversity, health and intellectual property rights.” Recent postings deal with the Starbucks Ethiopian coffee kerfuffle, biofuels and the Indian Biodiversity Act. Some very thoughtful stuff.
Ice cream: one hump or two?
Food manufacturers in Rajasthan, India, have created an ice cream made of camels’ milk. At a recent tasting, an Italian, no less, apparently described it as “an absolutely delicious desert treat”. Tommaso Sbriccoli, said it “compared favourably with the gelato-frozen desert in his home country” according to Daily India.
The serious point to all this is that there has actually been remarkably little selection for milk production in camels. That means an enormous diversity in how much herders can get from a female. I remember visiting a researcher in a desert country who was trying to improve matters, because a small decrease in the variation in milk production would make an enormous difference to the amount of milk poor nomads could get from their beasts. That idea crops up again from time to time but I’ve no idea whether any great progress has been made. Do you know?
Animal crackers
Us plant people went through this over ten years ago, but the animal genetic resources crowd are gearing up for their First International Technical Conference on Animal Genetic Resources, which will be held in Interlaken (Switzerland) in September 2007. FAO is behind it, as it was with plants. As part of the preparations, a workshop was just held, entitled The Future of Animal Genetic Resources: Under Corporate Control or in the Hands of Farmers and Pastoralists? Lots of papers in pdf here.