Bioversity’s Michael Mackay was recently interviewed on Radio Australia about plans to lead us all out of genebank database hell. Good luck to him!
Cacao goes sustainable, yes, but how?
The World Cocoa Foundation is offering a guide to the cocoa industry on sustainability principles that focus on equitable profit, labour standards and environmental issues.
That’s from a press release. There’s something similar on the World Cocoa Foundations’s blog. But I can’t find anywhere on the WCF website the teach-yourself-sustainable-cacao-farming document that I was foolishly expecting.
I guess we’ll have to make do with some general aims:
The sustainability initiative commits the foundation and its members to working toward three categories; profit, people and planet.
For the people category, the aim is for healthy and thriving cocoa-farming communities, where international labour standards are followed and farming practices are safe.
The planet category refers to responsible, sound environmental stewardship in cocoa-farming communities where soil and water are conserved and Integrated Pest Management to limit the use of agricultural chemicals, protecting the fragile tropical ecosystem.
And in terms of profit, the aim is to improve equitable economic returns for farmers built upon expanding entrepreneurial skills, stronger and more effective farmer associations, and more productive, profitable farming practices.
and a bunch of example projects. Not much about the importance of genetic diversity, alas.
A sorghum field trial in Mali
I acquired four new varieties of sorghum seed in Bamako at a research station and divvied them up between five farmers. Each farmer was to plant five small plots, one of each new variety and then the local variety as a control. From five farmers, four planted. From four planted, three sprouted (one got eaten by termites). From three sprouted, two survived to maturity (one got eaten by cows). From two mature stands, one got measured (one got damaged by birds). And this was Yaya’s. Yaya, my shining light in M’Pedougou.
A Peace Corps volunteer shares a family visit and some thoughts on conducting agricultural research in a different culture..
Another competition
News just in of a film competition. Trouble is, entries close on 31 January 2009. So, you’ve either already made the film, or you are a seasoned professional who can crank out finished product in 10 days or so. Either way, we say: “Go for it”.
Film-makers and new media artists across the Asia Pacific region are invited to enter their audio-visual creations for this award recognising excellence in films on rice-related issues. Presented by Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP), TVE Asia Pacific (TVEAP), and Public Media Agency (PMA) of Malaysia, the competition is open to both fictional and factual films on the theme of Asia’s rice heritage and the threats it faces in this era of globalisation.
The films may have been produced using professional video, home video, mobile phones or cinematic equipment. They may be in any of these formats or genres: 2D animation, 3D animation, songs, short drama, satire, adaptations of folk culture, or documentary. They need to have been made after January 1 2008. The winner will receive US$2,000, a plaque, and a certificate.
Blurb from Communications Initiative. Full details from PAN AP’s web site. Can’t think why they didn’t think to publicise the competition through us.
Darwin’s kitchen
By Jacob van Etten
It’s January 2009, the Darwin storm breaks loose. A taste of things to come is the publication of a revived and illustrated version of Emma Darwin’s recipe notebook. When authors Dusha Bateson and Weslie Janeway heard about the booklet in the Cambridge University Library they were “very concerned they wouldn’t be able to get a book out of it.” Yet they tried out every recipe and converted dust into gold by publishing them in a colourful cookbook.
Weslie Janeway says:
One of the things that is very clear is that people ate much more seasonally then – although we see the beginnings of modern food supply. For example, they married in 1839, and the railroads were being built. And it began to be possible to have fish away from the coast. Rice was arriving from the rice plantations in America. Basically, they had root vegetables all winter.
The recipe for boiling rice is in Charles Darwin’s own hand.