Today’s the big day for agriculture in Copenhagen. A lot is riding on it, because there hasn’t been much sign of interest at UNFCCC COP15 up to now in the subject of how agriculture is going to adapt to climate change. You can follow Cary Fowler’s Notes from Copenhagen on Facebook.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Snapped on a bus this morning. See the animal there on the left? Does it look like a sheep to you? Does cashmere come from sheep? Would you buy “cashmere” from a manufacturer that doesn’t know what animal produces cashmere? Not even at a 50% discount?
Irish Seed Savers Association relaunches website
They’re on our list of seed sources, but of course we don’t check each of those all that often, so thanks to our friend Danny for pointing out that the Irish Seed Savers Association has launched a funky new web site. Go, enjoy, help them out.
Finding Vavilov. Not.
A user gets stranded in Genebank Database Hell looking for Vavilov’s collections in Tunisia. Not for the fainthearted.
Waste promotes organic food?
David Zetland has an interesting take on that 40% of American food is wasted paper.
[I]t seems possible to switch all production to organics:
- We can have enough, even with 40 percent lower yields.
- Higher prices would reduce demand for food, and thus obesity. (They may cause people to switch to cheaper foods, but those tend to be better for you — rice vs meat — if you ignore the idea that steakhouse diners will switch to McDs.)
Of course, this will not happen through regulation or a wholesale change in people’s demand for food. It could happen if water or carbon use was taxed: that waste uses 25 percent of fresh water and 300 million bbl oil; that’s not even counting methane resulting from rot.