Living Labs videos online

Television for Education-Asia Pacific (TVEAP) has a series of five-minute videos on YouTube highlighting the work of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food in some of the more important river basins of the world:

With water scarcity emerging as a global concern, we simply cannot continue the water-intense methods of the past. Yet, as human numbers increase, more food needs to be produced with the same — or shrinking — land. This calls for smarter, thriftier ways of using freshwater and increasing water’s productivity in agriculture, without damaging the environment, or undermining food security, jobs or health.

Someone is wrong on the internet

Cavolo nero from http://flickr.com/photos/geomangio/396228137/ Vigilant as ever, duty calls. There’s a slim chance you may see an article in French about the famed Tuscan cabbage known as cavolo nero. It is my sad responsibility to tell you that bits of it are mistaken. 1 Most important, the photo is certainly not cavolo nero. If it were, it would hardly match her description. Cavolo nero is much more of a kale than a hearted cabbage, and if you were to look in the market for something resembling her picture (which looks to me like a very ordinary Savoy cabbage, or verza), you would not be getting the authentic black Tuscan kale.

Our picture, which is definitely the real thing, is from Geomangio at flickr; I can’t easily find one of the whole plant.