And here’s another nice agrobiodiversity video, though not part of the contest Jeremy refers to in the previous post. It’s about the guarango (Prosopis pallida) tree of the Peruvian coast. Once central to pre-Columbian culture for its pods, wood and ecosystem services, it is now “near extinction in the Ica-Nasca region.” But it’s not going down without a fight, and it is getting some help, for example from a Kew reforestation project. Thanks, Charlotte.
A Commission meets
All go at FAO again with the Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture holding its 12th meeting. One of the things on the agenda is consideration of the 2nd report on the State of the World’s Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (the final version is available online as a large pdf). There’s also a side event on crop wild relatives, among others. IISD has the low-down every day.
Indigenous food book online
I don’t think I made it sufficiently clear when I last blogged about the FAO publication Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, published with the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) that it is available in its entirety online as a pdf (9MB). Thank you, FAO!
Permaculture eco-pioneer on CNN
We’ve blogged about permaculture before, actually several times, and I follow the goings on at the Permaculture Institute of Australia via their RSS feed. They define permaculture as
…the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way.
Which makes it sound so sexy I should not have been surprised to see it going mainstream on CNN a few days ago. But I was. Cynical old me. There are a couple of other interesting things — from an agrobiodiversity point of view — in CNN’s Going Green section.
Carver Day in St Louis
It’s Carver Day at the Missouri Botanical Garden today. Sounds like fun. We’ve blogged about George Washington Carver and his pioneering interest in, and work with, agrobiodiversity before. He was a Missouri native, which I think is his only connection to MoBo, but that’s ok, any excuse is good to celebrate such a man. If you go, let us know.