Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Nigel sort of agrees with Dave on the usefulness of protected areas:
Dave is interestingly provocative and I have a lot of sympathy with his frustration which I at least in part share!
But you just know there’s a “but…” coming up. And indeed there is. In spades. Read the whole thing. Then have your say.
Oh, and there’s more on this discussion here, from Danny and Jeremy.
Peter Matthews attempts to mediate between agriculture and nature:
I think if the nature-conservation ethic could extend further into agricultural landscapes, then there would be more room to extend the development-ethic into natural landscapes. Lets say 20% for nature, 60% for nature and us, and 20% just for us? What are we aiming for, if we have any aims?
So, let’s all hear it for the Satoyama Initiative and “socio-ecological production landscapes”?
As promised a few days ago, the Roots for Life campaign was officially launched on 1 October. In a nutshell, it is looking for 4235 “heroes” to donate US$ 5,000 each. That will save every variety of the cultivated potato, plus its wild relatives, forever. The money will be “channeled” to the genebank of the International Potato Centre. So, get out your checkbook.
A recent paper in Agricultural Systems looks at what’s happened to the potential yields of eight crops (winter wheat, spring barley, maize, winter rapeseed, potato, sugar beet, pulses and sunflower) in Europe from 1976 to 2005. Italy and central and eastern Europe have been the big losers (left), probably due to higher temperature increases, sometimes in combination with lower radiation values.
And the British Islands have been the big winners (right), due to to longer period during which temperature is optimum for CO2 assimilation, sometimes in combination with higher radiation levels. That, of course, cannot last forever, though.
Our innocuous post on genetic erosion in Georgia elicits consternation from Dirk at the lack of proper reference to previous work, support from Eliseu by analogy with a similar study in Portugal, and the usual diatribe from Luigi about the level of discourse on genetic erosion. But really, it was all about the threshing board.