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HomeBlogRollCompetitionSeedsArticlesMapSubscribeContactAbout Subscribe Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog Crops, animals, wild relatives … The farmers of the future by Luigi on December 2, 2008 in Policy “America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done… Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save.” { 0 comments } Berry Go Round #11 is up by Luigi on December 2, 2008 in Information With lots of great stuff, from pretty much all over the Plant Kingdom. Enjoy! { 0 comments } Onion tears by Robert on December 2, 2008 in Biotechnology, Breeding A Kiwi researcher laments that regulations make it pointless to work on GMO’s in New Zealand. He mentions a particular sad case in point: the obstacles to testing tearless onions. There is no reference to this in the trade-journal for this type of news, the Onion1. What to say? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with making onions tearless, but I feel it would be a loss. Not having rational objections, I search for a metaphysical answer. Something like Carlos Drummond de Andrade’s poem about an opposite case: Mal do Século Como se não bastasse o mundo de tristezas entre céu e terra, principalmente em terra, vem o agrónomo, descobre o vírus da tristeza nas laranjeiras.My translation: Times of Sorrow As if there wasn’t enough sadness between heaven and earth particularly on earth comes the agronomist, discovers the sadness virus in the orange treesFootnotes:Compensated by their coverage of the new DNA test to reveal who is bald [↩] { 2 comments } Agrobiodiversity and HIV/AIDS by Luigi on December 1, 2008 in Information, Policy On World AIDS Day, it would be nice to be able to point to how agrobiodiversity can help the more than 40 million people living with HIV around the world. Not easy, alas. There’s an FAO strategy-type document from 2003. And what looks like a project from Wageningen University that’s just about to end. But very little else in the way of concrete examples, at least that I could find in the first few pages of a Google search. There was a piece today reviewing the role of nutrition in dealing with HIV/AIDS, but this mainly dealt with supplements. Can this possibly be it? { 1 comment } Adaptation for tropical forests, tropical forests for adaptation by Robert on December 1, 2008 in Climate change, Forests, Indigenous knowledge systems “Climate change could have a devastating effect on the world’s forests and the nearly 1 billion people who depend on them for their livelihoods”1 says the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) in a press release about a new report.Unless immediate action is taken. CIFOR proposes helping forests adapt by taking measures such as improving fire management; using plantation species that can cope with future climate; and helping forests evolve with changing climate rather than resist it. Forests can help us adapt — reduce the vulnerability of society to climate change — by assuring the flow of ecosystem services. There should be help for the people who are managing, living in or conserving forests to adapt to future changes:“The people living in forests are highly dependent on forest goods and services and are often very vulnerable socioeconomically,” says Bruno Locatelli, a CIFOR scientist and lead author of the report. “They usually have a much more intimate understanding of their forests than anyone else, but the unprecedented rates of climate change will almost certainly jeopardise their ability to adapt to new conditions. They will need help.”Helping the people who know best seems an interesting contradiction and I wondered how they were proposing to go about that. Participatory approaches, it seems. I could not find that much about it in the report, which focuses on process and policy. Take this excerpt from Box 11 on “The role of science in coordinating and supporting adaptive processes in West Africa” (by Houria Djoudi, Hermann Kambire and Maria Brockhaus).A workshop on local governance, forests and adaptive capacities in a municipality in southwest Burkina Faso, with actors from different scales, established a platform for shared knowledge and learning on forests and adaptation to climate change. Efforts to contribute to vertical coordination of adaptation, as well as support for local governance and horizontal coordination in decision making processes related to climate change adaptation and forests, are ongoing.CIFOR also has an interesting little report on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD).Footnotes:That many? I think that they count anyone who uses a tree as part of their livelihood as someone dependent on forests. They might as well say that we all depend on forests, which we do. [↩] { 0 comments } Searching for seeds? by Luigi on November 30, 2008 in Information, Mainstream, Markets, Networking, Organic agriculture, Vegetables Mother Earth News has an online seed finder. It lets you search the “online catalogs of more than 500 mail order seed companies,” mainly in the US, presumably. Test it out and let them know if you could or couldn’t find what you were looking for. We might need to send them our seed list… { 0 comments } Catch a fire, China-style by Luigi on November 30, 2008 in Archaeology, History, Medicinal plants The 18 researchers, most of them based in China, subjected the cannabis to a battery of tests, including carbon dating and genetic analysis. Scientists also tried to germinate 100 of the seeds found in the cache, without success.Bummer, man. Via. Show on map { 4 comments } The need for diverse street trees by Robert on November 30, 2008 in Forests, Urban agriculture City planners take note:“Tree diversity helps prevent pests from gaining a foothold,” said Mike Bohne, forest health group leader for the United States Forest Service. “It also makes it so that a community does not lose its entire urban canopy if there is an infestation.”Too late for Worcester, Massachusetts (USA), where 80% of the street trees are maples. Most of them are infested by the Asian long-horned beetle and need to be removed. Property values may plummet further. The beetle was introduced to the USA with wood packing material from China. Eradication efforts are intense as much larger economic damage is looming. Worcester is in New England and the invasive beetle might now spread to the famed maple forests that produce large quantities of syrup, wood, and leaf-peeping tourists. Show on map { 0 comments } SRI: does it work or what? by Robert on November 28, 2008 in Indigenous knowledge systems, Organic agriculture The System of Rice Intensification (SRI) strikes again, now on Java and Bali:Farmers across Indonesia have bumper rice harvests thanks to a revolutionary method: 50 percent increase in yield with just one 10th of the seed, virtually no chemical fertilizers and little water.SRI is a system which consists of transplanting widely spaced very young individual rice plants, using organic fertilizers, and not permanently saturating the fields with water. The method was developed — on the basis of existing farmer practices — by a priest in Madagascar in the 1980s, and it has since found a prophet in Norman Uphoff. It is still used in Madagascar, but mainly by larger farmers, as it is too labor intensive for the smaller farmers (who do the work for the large farmers). Or so I was told when I visited there earlier this year.The BBC reported a doubling of yields in Nepal. George Bush was briefed about it during his visit to India. Luigi wrote about it a year ago. And now the reports of bumper crops in Indonesia.All is for the best then? Not really: the whole thing is rather controversial. Tom Sinclair said this about it in 2004: SRI appears to be only the latest in a family of unconfirmed field observations (UFOs) (…). While there is an abundance of “sightings,” they are anecdotal and reported by people who have minimum understanding of the basic scientific principles being challenged by such reports. In many cases, mysterious circumstances are invoked to explain the miraculous.In a rather thorough review, in 2006, McDonald, Hobbs and Riha found that it sometimes works (in Madagascar), but that generally yields are 11% lower with SRI, not higher.What is one to think then? Do newspapers blindly follow NGOs, and do farmers say what is scripted? Another case of overselling? Or is this a true farmer/priest led breakthrough, which scientist at fancy universities and research institutes just do not get? There certainly has been overselling, with claims of unrealistically high rice yields (e.g., 15 tons per hectare). However, there could be circumstances where SRI does have benefits, for example on some problem soils (with iron toxicity), and perhaps in other low potential situations as well. When SRI ‘works’, it is hard to know what farmers really did. Perhaps planting density was not quite that low, and organic fertilizer were applied at very high. What is SRI being compared with anyway? A degenerate farm, or a fully optimized ‘modern’ farm? More field trials are planned. I am not optimisitic, but let’s hope that they will provide some clarity about the conditions under which SRI increases yields (or not). The dispute would be settled, and we’d have more rice for less resources. { 5 comments } Technology is not enough, part 2 by Luigi on November 28, 2008 in Policy Policy makers should give as much emphasis to incentives and affordability of modern inputs as to their efforts to ensure availability of technologies. Non-technical issues are just as important. The wider innovation system, encompassing technology delivery, marketing, and wider institutional and policy issues — most notably land — must be looked at more comprehensively, if productivity boosts in grain staples is to create the wider growth effects in the economy, with advantages for poorer and richer farmers alike.This time from Ethiopia. Show on map { 0 comments } Technology is not enough by Luigi on November 27, 2008 in Markets, Policy Greater investment in improving agricultural technology certainly needs to be part of the solution to meet the rising demand for food. But if spatially connective infrastructure (roads and bridges in particular) and complementary services such as agricultural extension are ignored, these findings from Bangladesh suggest that few farmers in lagging but potentially productive regions will benefit, thwarting the goal of raising agricultural productivity. Show on map { 0 comments } Nature with a capital N by Robert on November 27, 2008 in Fruits and nuts, Policy The Prince of Wales is at it again. In The Times he writes about our need to reconnect with Nature.You may believe that I have some reactionary obsession with returning to a kind of mock medieval, forelock-tugging past. All I am saying is that we simply cannot contend with the global environmental crises we face by relying on clever technological “fixes” on their own. His enemy is Modernism. His answer is Harmony. “In denying the invisible ‘grammar of harmony’ we create cacophony and dissonance.” Complexity is key to life. The diversity that made up this complexity was bulldozed in the pursuit of simplicity and convenience, creating an appeal that continues to fuel the conspicuous consumption and throwaway societies we see everywhere.Not a Darwinistic struggle but a community effort, then: “Biology shows that (…) life seeks balance. Every organism works together to produce a harmonic whole.” Well, I try. Show on map { 0 comments } Got a thing about exotic fruit? by Luigi on November 27, 2008 in Fruits and nuts, Mainstream Here’s a video of some people you can probably relate to. Via. swfobject.embedSWF("http://www.youtube.com/v/x1rfXde7Up0&rel=1&fs=1", "vvq4935b788011ec", "425", "335", "9", vvqexpressinstall, vvqflashvars, vvqparams, vvqattributes); { 0 comments } President grows food on grounds of official residence by Luigi on November 26, 2008 in Mainstream, Policy No, not Obama tending arugula and other assorted agrobiodiversity on the White House lawn. Show on map { 0 comments } Access to academic journals by Jeremy on November 26, 2008 in Information Noodling around Googlespace I’m often brought up short when a published paper is part of JSTOR, because access is restricted to those who can pay for the privilege.1 Now, via the CAPRi blog, comes news that JSTOR is opening itself up to more developing countries through its Developing Nations Access Initiative. Go ahead and ask, if you may be eligible. Meanwhile, we’ll consider relocating ourselves.Footnotes:No matter that your taxes may have already paid for the research. [↩] { 2 comments } Hot air on climate change? by Jeremy on November 26, 2008 in Climate change, Policy Over before it began, in the sense that nothing actually happens until we report it here, the first meeting of the Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group (AHTEG) on Biodiversity and Climate Change of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) took place in London from 17-21 November 2008. Did AHTEG consider either the impact of climate change of the diversity of crops and their wild relatives, or the need to crops and their wild relatives to mitigate the impacts of climate change?Our source does not say, and I simply don’t know, and a quick glance at the list of meeting documents is no help. Someone, enlighten us, please. { 1 comment } Nothing succeeds like success by Luigi on November 25, 2008 in Information, Policy So if you know “policies, programs, and investments in pro-poor agricultural development that have had a proven impact on hunger and food security,” the International Food Policy Research Institute would like to hear from you. To submit a nomination or nominations for “Millions Fed: Proven Successes in Agricultural Development,” please visit the IFPRI website. { 0 comments } Flood-tolerant rice hits primetime by Luigi on November 25, 2008 in Biotechnology, Breeding, Genebanks You remember Robert’s entry for last year’s competition? Well, now check out this piece from MSNBC. And there’s a video too:Always nice to see a genebank on the evening news. Show on map { 0 comments } CWR and medicinal species in botanic gardens by Luigi on November 25, 2008 in Information, Medicinal plants, Wild relatives Suzanne Sharrock of Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has left a very interesting comment on our post a couple of day ago about the overlap between wild medicinal plants and wild crop relatives. Rather than letting it languish in obscurity, I’m reproducing it below:At BGCI we have developed a list of around 3,000 plant species that are used for medicinal purposes. Of these, we know that 1,802 are in cultivation in botanic gardens and this list can be easily extracted from our PlantSearch database. Simply select ‘medicinal plants’ and the list of medicinal plants that are in cultivation in botanic gardens is displayed. On this list, plants that are also CWR are marked (according to a list of CWR genera). If you download the list, it can be easily be manipulated in excel so you can extract those species (164 species) that are both medicinal plants and crop wild relatives and are in cultivation in botanic gardens.If anyone is interested, we could provide the full list of plants that are on both our medicinal and CWR lists — not just those in cultivation in botanic gardens. { 0 comments } Slow Food on the move by Luigi on November 25, 2008 in Cooking, Indigenous knowledge systems, Information, Mainstream, Organic agriculture, Policy, Tourism The Slow Food movement is evolving, its founder says: “People who sniff a cheese and talk about how it has the most wonderful aroma of horse sweat. Think how incredibly boring we would be if we were still just a gastronomic society.” { 0 comments } ← Older Entries  Latest Nibbles December 2, 2008
More (than you might possibly ever want) on that ancient weed.Yellow River unfit “even for agriculture”. Via.Danny does chicha. We await a full report.Drip irrigation uses more water! Say it isn’t so. Via.
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Say What?Jeremy on Onion tearsInoculated Mind on Onion tearsVictor Mulinge on Trees in KenyaRobert on SRI: does it work or what?J on Agrobiodiversity and HIV/AIDSJacob on Catch a fire, China-styleInoculated Mind on SRI: does it work or what?What's Hot?Single gene looking for water Exploring a Sarajevo market Lost in genebank database hell Harlan II – Field trip Trees in Kenya Blogroll The list of links was getting too big, but they are all here. Want in? Let us know.
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