You know what? This video is really rather good. Hats off to the team at the Vancouver Film School.
Indian movement to change agricultural policy
The Kisan Swaraj Yatra is a nation-wide mobilization drawing fresh attention to the continuing agricultural crisis in India, and calling for a comprehensive new path for Indian agriculture – that will provide livelihood and food security for small farmers, keep our soils alive, and our food and water poison-free. The bus-Yatra will start at the Sabarmati Gandhi Ashram on Oct 2nd, and pass through 20 states to reach Rajghat, New Delhi on Dec 11th.
Tell the Indian government to stop anti-farmer pro-corporatist policies, ensure dignified livelihoods for farming community, and promote sustainable agriculture. Send this petition to Smt.Sonia Gandhi, chairperson of UPA.
Only just discovered this — it is scheduled to end on 11 December — and am hoping someone else will do the needful and summarize its achievements for us at some point.
A preview of climate change
Congratulations to our friends at CIAT, who produced this engrossing trailer to show why farmers and researchers need to start preparing to adapt to climate change now.
Mystery plant; can you help?
To Ferrara for the weekend, and two plant ID mysteries.
In the Castello di Ferrara — a wondrous building — is a room dedicated to court banquets and the like. It featured extracts from an early how-to guide, Giovanni Battista’s Dello Scalco, published in 1584. There were also enlargements of images to do with food and banquets. Actually, the entire castle exhibit made great use of enlarged images, which worked rather well, I thought. But I digress. Among the images was the one I reproduce below.
“Whisky foxtrot tango,” I thought to myself. What is it? Could it possibly be a horned melon, kiwano, or Cucumis metuliferus? Hard to say. But having taken a snap of that and the frontispiece of the book, I figured I’d be able to find out later. 1 It was not to be. Despite finding a gloriously usable scanned copy of the book, I couldn’t see any plates. And if it wasn’t from that book, I wasn’t sure where to look. Another manual from the same time didn’t have any plates either.
Of course I sent it to my friend Mr Peanut, who sent it to some of his cucurbit friends, and an answer may yet arrive. In the meantime, however, what can you tell me about it?
Good harvest at Berry go Round
There’s a good harvest of ag-related posts up at the latest edition of Berry Go Round, the blog carnival about plants. There’s cotton, and cranberries, and diversity on ranchland, and elderberry wine, and barley domestication. In fact, our post on gap-filling is probably the least agricultural thing there. Anyway, scoot on over, and say we sent you.