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New Scientist bottles it

I have a lot of respect for the New Scientist. I really do. I kind of grew up with it. But I don’t think it handled the Great Seed Bank Confusion very well. Let me remind you. Last week a blog post went up at Short Sharp Science confusing the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew with the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is demonstrably not at Kew. Here’s a screen grab of that original post (click to enlarge):
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That was bad enough, as both places have been in the news a lot lately, and it elicited the predictable flood of comments ((Even one by me!)) — some unpardonably rude, it must be admitted ((Not mine!)) — setting the blogger right. But it was nearly a week before the post was corrected, thusly:
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And, rather than being up-front, the apology for the mistake, and the notice that a correction has been made, is buried in the 18th comment.

Journalists often bitch and moan about bloggers not being sufficiently professional about checking sources etc etc. I think New Scientist was unprofessional in making the original mistake — but hey, that happens — but also, and unforgivably, in not owning up to it quickly and visibly enough. Anyway, at least now everyone knows the difference between Kew and Svalbard.

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Recreational farming

An interesting triptych today on farming as recreation. Kind of, anyway. From Vietnam, an unfortunately rather brief article on how foreign tourists can become farmers for a day at Tra Que village. The piece doesn’t say whether that’s the same Tra Que which is being protected by trademark, but I would guess so. ((Incidentally, there was news today of the European Union protecting another few agricultural products through geographic indications.))

There was also today an article about the Konso of Ethiopia, who are apparently sometimes referred to as “the toughest farmers in Africa.” A so-called eco-lodge has been set up, “whose mission is to tie tourism and community development activism through permaculture together, delivering tangible community benefits.” Again, as in Vietnam, the idea is community immersion, though for longer than just a day, and in rather more difficult circumstance, I expect.

And finally, to the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Connecticut. Actually it’s a bit of a cheek including this with the previous two stories. The people attending the Centre, and others like it, are in earnest about learning to farm in a way that follows the Law: “One-sixth of the Talmud deals with agriculture.” Some, indeed, will take farming up as a profession. But not all: “We don’t all need to be farmers. To have farming be a little part of every Jewish person’s life, that’s our goal.”

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Featured comment: Alnus

Michael Bell on Frankia and Alnus:

I have started a truly wild project – developing alder as a grain crop! <snip> I would be very grateful for living material, cuttings or seeds. If the place where trees which meet my needs can be described, I can go and get it myself. The plan is to copy the “Open Source” ideas of Linux and similar computer systems. All those who contribute material will be offered the results of my work.

Send us updates!

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Catch of the week

There has been an overwhelming response to my call to stop over-fishing. UNEP made a map. Rupert Murray contributed a film, The End of the Line, destined to become the next eco-blockbuster; if it can beat Flipper-flick The Cove.

Google Earth volunteered spectacular improvements of their sea maps. Meanwhile, in India, M.S. Swaminathan ((Coincidentally, he also appears in a BBC documentary about ‘forgotten crops’ that is being cable-casted as I write this; apparently a year later then in other places.)) called for integrated coastal management and legislation. Thanks to Greenpeace for ratcheting up its campaign against pirate fishing. And to you for all the donations; keep them coming.

On the downside, Japanese “researchers” use military grade weapons to shake off activists that won’t let them kill whales; and Brazil’s fish exports may double this year.

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Landscape-agro-ecology

The February issue of BioScience has an article about the connectivity of the agricultural landscape in the USA. Margaret Margosian and colleagues used a graph-theoretical approach to characterize the ‘resistance’ of the American landscape against the spread of crop pests and diseases ((Margaret L. Margosian, Karen A. Garrett, J. M. Shawn Hutchinson, and Kimberly A. With, 2009. Connectivity of the American agricultural landscape: assessing the national risk of crop pest and disease spread. BioScience 59: 141–151)). The idea is that the resistance of the landscape to, say the spread of a maize disease, is higher if there is less maize planted in a region. The authors show that wheat, grown in distinct and poorly connected regions, is less vulnerable than soybean, which is grown in a single contiguous region. They suggest that this approach should be helpful for risk assessment and responding to newly introduced diseases. So far, the results are at the level of a general characterization. It would be great if they could validate their predictions with observed disease data. That will be hard, as there are many other factors, like local weather, that come into play.

But it should be possible. Landscape effects on pest abundance were recently quantified by Douglas Landis and coworkers ((Douglas A. Landis, Mary M. Gardiner, Wopke van der Werf, and Scott M. Swinton, 2008. Increasing corn for biofuel production reduces biocontrol services in agricultural landscapes. PNAS 105(51):20552–20557)). They found that:

Recent biofuel-driven growth in corn planting results in lower landscape diversity, altering the supply of aphid natural enemies to soybean fields and reducing biocontrol services by 24%. This loss of biocontrol services cost soybean producers in these states an estimated $58 million per year in reduced yield and increased pesticide use.

Now think of the work by Claire Kremen and co-workers showing how landscape pattern influences the ‘pollination ecosystem service’ by wild bees ((Kremen, C., Williams, N. M. and R. W. Thorp. 2002a. Crop pollination from native bees at risk from agricultural intensification. PNAS 99:16812-16816)).

And the call for ecological engineering of landscapes to avoid outbreaks of rice pest. And conservationists that work on shade trees in coffee fields, to help birds and other wild organisms — and get high quality coffee.

I think we are witnessing the coming of age of landscape-agro-ecology. The study of agriculture and its biodiversity beyond the field scale.