Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
A tweet caught my eye the other week. 40 Chances is the title of a project (and book) by Howard G Buffett, who has taken some interesting approaches to agriculture for development as he spends some of his dad’s money. I don’t follow 40 chances, but our pal Jacob does. Our conversation is self-explanatory, if …
Continue reading “Afghan farmers pull off a poppy hat trick”
Tasmania is convulsed by a row over the shortage of raw material to process into stuff euphemistically labelled “Concentrate of Poppy Straw“. A hint: you can get four kinds of CPS: morphine, thebaine, oripavine and codeine. In response, the government gave one of the processors permission to import 2000 tonnes of raw poppy capsules from …
We’ve blogged repeatedly about Afghanistan’s poppy problem, or rather the West’s problem with Afghanistan’s poppies. Now, thanks to English Russia, via Zyalt, comes a remarkable set of photographs showing how exactly one goes about destroying a field of opium poppies. And, incidentally, someone’s livelihood. Women and children run out into the field. They cry and …
We’ve occasionally, and perhaps too timidly, mentioned the futility of attempts to eradicate Papaver somniferum in Afghanistan. The crop is ideally suited to the terrain, and the product lucrative and in short supply globally. Also, illegal, at least in Afghanistan. But not in France, India or Australia. Over at Lawyers, Guns and Money, a group …
A new GRAIN Briefing is scathing about current efforts to “rebuild” agriculture in Afghanistan. It alleges that these are taking place with little or no reference to the “rich heritage of farmers’ varieties.” ((Including, alas, of the opium poppy. But I’m not going to go there on this occasion, though GRAIN does.)) First, seed aid …