One Quarter of all Pigs in the World Died of Swine Flu...in China

Swine fever devastated China’s stock because with unsound governance, even sound regulations have perverse effects.

On a recent visit to my hometown by the Yangtze River in eastern China, relatives welcomed me, as ever, with a feast: steamed perch and hairy crab, deep-fried river shrimp — and braised pork. My 84-year-old father made sure to serve pork, even though it was now twice as expensive as the year before. This time, he didn’t get the meat from my brother, who until this fall had been the village’s largest pork producer: All 150 pigs on my brother’s farm had either died or been culled because of African swine fever.

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Gangs are spreading swine flu by drone to attempt to extort farmers into selling their stock for well below market prices.  So there is that, too.

The Anthropocene Didn't Just Start, Dates from at least 4,000 Years ago

Humans had caused significant landcover change on Earth up to 4000 years earlier than previously thought, University of Queensland researchers have found.

The School of Social Sciences' Dr Andrea Kay said some scientists defined the Anthropocene as starting in the 20th century, but the new research showed human-induced landcover change was globally extensive by 2000BC.

The Anthropocene - the current geological age - is viewed as the period in which human activity has been the dominant influence on Earth's climate and the environment.

"The activities of farmers, pastoralists and hunter-gatherers had significantly changed the planet four milennia ago,'' Dr Kay said.

The ArchaeoGLOBE project used an online survey to gather land-use estimates over the past 10,000 years from archaeologists with regional expertise.

"The modern rate and scale of anthropogenic global change is far greater than those of the deep past, but the long-term cumulative changes that early food producers wrought on Earth are greater than many people realise," Dr Kay said.

"Even small-scale, shifting agriculture can cause significant change when considered at large scales and over long time-periods."

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2nd link.  3rd link. 4th link. 5th link. 6th link.  7th link.  8th link.

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Note: *NO* part of the globe was exempt.  Not even the Americas.

Evidence of the Importance of Animal Management for the Maya in Ceibal, Guatemala

Earliest isotopic evidence in the Maya region for animal management and long-distance trade at the site of Ceibal, Guatemala 

Authors: 

Sharpe et al 

Abstract: 

This study uses a multiisotope (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and strontium) approach to examine early animal management in the Maya region. An analysis of faunal specimens across almost 2,000 years (1000 BC to AD 950) at the site of Ceibal, Guatemala, reveals the earliest evidence for live-traded dogs and possible captive-reared taxa in the Americas. These animals may have been procured for ceremonial functions based on their location in the monumental site core, suggesting that animal management and trade began in the Maya area to promote special events, activities that were critical in the development of state society. Isotopic evidence for animal captivity at Ceibal reveals that animal management played a greater role in Maya communities than previously believed.

People Deforested the Central African Tropical Rain Forest 2,600 Years ago

The forested expanses of Central Africa host the second largest block of tropical rainforest on Earth (after Amazonia), stretching over around 2 × 106 km2. They are the great green heart of Africa, and changes in vegetation cover are likely to have important but poorly understood influences on the climate of much of the continent (1). A remarkable feature is that this blanket of forest appears quite tenuous—under the arid climates of the ice ages, the forest appears to have retreated into isolated pockets surrounded by savanna grasslands. Even in the climatically stable Holocene, there appears to have been periods of substantial forest retreat. In particular, there is evidence for a period of major forest loss between 3,000 and 2,000 y ago [termed the Late Holocene rainforest crisis (LHRC) (2)]. Attributing the cause of this decline is complicated by the fact that this period coincided with major expansion of Neolithic and early Iron Age farmers southward from the Nigeria/Cameroon border regions into western Central Africa. Did the farmers take advantage of a forest retreat driven by climate drying, or were they the primary cause of the forest loss? In recent years, there has been a vigorous debate on the cause of the LHRC. Now, Garcin et al. (3) provide new data and an unexpected new insight, presenting strong evidence that there was no strong drying event, and therefore suggesting that it was direct deforestation that caused this retreat of the Central African rainforests.

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Better start rethinking the anthropocene, folks.

Anatolian Population Initiated its own Agricultural, did not Import From Fertile Crescent?

Small scale agricultural farming was first initiated by indigenous communities living on Turkey's Anatolian plateau, and not introduced by migrant farmers as previously thought, according to new research by the University of Liverpool.

Professor Douglas Baird and his team discovered the presence of carbonised seeds and phytoliths of wheat chaff at Boncuklu, along with agricultural weeds commonly found in early farming sites, suggesting the cultivation of crops did take place.

Additionally, nitrogen isotopes from sheep and goat bone collagen indicate very small scale experimentation with the herding of these animals.

Analysis of stone tools and ancient DNA suggests an indigenous population, rather than migrants from earlier agricultural communities within the Fertile Crescent.

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The Indus Valley Civilization (Harappan) Started Growing Rice MUCH Earler Than Thought

Approaching rice domestication in South Asia: New evidence from Indus settlements in northern India

Authors:

Bates et al

Abstract:

The nature and timing of rice domestication and the development of rice cultivation in South Asia is much debated. In northern South Asia there is presently a significant gap (c.4200 years) between earliest evidence for the exploitation of wild rice (Lahuradewa c.6000 BCE) and earliest dated evidence for the utilisation of fully domesticated rice (Mahagara c.1800 BCE). The Indus Civilisation (c.3000–1500 BCE) developed and declined during the intervening period, and there has been debate about whether rice was adopted and exploited by Indus populations during this ‘gap’. This paper presents new analysis of spikelet bases and weeds collected from three Indus Civilisation settlements in north-west India, which provide insight into the way that rice was exploited. This analysis suggests that starting in the period before the Indus urban phase (Early Harappan) and continuing through the urban (Mature Harappan/Harappan), post-urban (Late Harappan) and on into the post-Indus Painted Grey Ware (PGW) period, there was a progressive increase in the proportion of domesticated-type spikelet bases and a decrease in wild-types. This pattern fits with a model of the slow development of rice exploitation from wild foraging to agriculture involving full cultivation. Importantly, the accompanying weeds show no increased proportions of wetland species during this period. Instead a mix of wetland and dryland species was identified, and although these data are preliminary, they suggest that the development of an independent rice tradition may have been intertwined with the practices of the eastern most Indus peoples. These data also suggest that when fully domesticated Oryza sativa ssp. japonica was introduced around 2000 BCE, it arrived in an area that was already familiar with domesticated rice cultivation and a range of cultivation techniques.

Ants Domesticated Fungus for Farming 60 to 55 Million Years ago During the Paleogene

A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops reveal a surprisingly ancient history of mutual adaptations. This evolutionary give-and-take has led to some species--the leafcutter ants--developing industrial-scale farming that surpasses human agriculture in its efficiency.

The key chapters of the history of ant agriculture are written into the genes of both the insects and their crop fungi. A team including Jacobus Boomsma, research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and biology professor at the University of Copenhagen with his colleagues there, Sanne Nygaard and Guojie Zhang, looked at the genes of seven species of farming ants and their associated fungi to understand how the partnership developed. In a study published in Nature Communications, the scientists found that 55 to 60 million years ago ants belonging to the tribe Attini switched from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to subsistence farming of fungi that grew on decomposing, woody plant matter. The slow-growing fungi sustained tiny colonies of ants, but it was the first step toward agriculture on a much larger scale.

"The ants lost many genes when they committed to farming fungi," said Boomsma. This tied the fate of the ants to their food--with the insects depending on the fungi for nutrients, and the fungi increasing their likelihood of survival if they produced more nutritious crop. "It led to an evolutionary cascade of changes, unmatched by any other animal lineage studied so far."

The researchers found that around 25 million years ago one lineage of fungus-farming ants began cultivating fungi that produced tiny, protein-rich bulbs that the ants preferentially harvested. More nutritious food supported larger colonies, spurring even more advances in ant-fungus co-evolution until, 15 million years ago, the leafcutter ants emerged. Leafcutter ant species cut and sow their underground farms daily with fresh, green plant matter, cultivating a fully domesticated species of fungus on an industrial scale that can sustain colonies with up to millions of ants.

Domestication changed both partners in the relationship. Unlike its ancestors and present-day wild relatives, the leafcutter ants' fungus can no longer produce enzymes that digest woody plant matter, making it reliant on leafy greens brought in by the ants. In turn, the fungus produces fruiting bodies swollen with proteins essential for the ants' growth. The ants have evolved special enzymes to easily digest this superfood and cannot eat anything else. Unable to survive without each other, the symbiotic leafcutters and their fungi nonetheless form the largest colonies of any of the fungus-farming ants. They work together as the dominant herbivores in Neotropical forests.

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Crops Grown in Martian Soil Simulant Appear to be Edible

Dutch scientists said Thursday crops of four vegetables and cereals grown on soil similar to that on Mars have been found safe to eat, amid plans for the first manned mission to the planet.

Abundant harvests of radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes all grown on the soil were found to contain "no dangerous levels" of heavy metals, said the team from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

"These remarkable results are very promising," said senior ecologist Wieger Wamelink.

"We can actually eat the radishes, peas, rye and tomatoes, and I am very curious what they will taste like."

Future Mars settlers will have to take food supplies with them and then plant crops in order to survive.

So using soil developed by NASA to resemble that of the red planet, the university has been experimenting since 2013 and has managed to raise 10 crops.

But uncertainty remains about whether they would absorb the high levels of heavy metals such cadmium, copper and lead, present in Mars soil.

Further tests are now needed on the remaining six crops, including potatoes, in research which is being backed by a crowd-funding campaign.

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Rice Agriculture Dates Back 9,000 Years ago

Chew on this: rice farming is a far older practice than we knew. In fact, the oldest evidence of domesticated rice has just been found in China, and it's about 9,000 years old.

The discovery, made by a team of archaeologists that includes University of Toronto Mississauga professor Gary Crawford, sheds new light on the origins of rice domestication and on the history of human agricultural practices.

"Today, rice is one of most important grains in the world's economy, yet at one time, it was a wild plant...how did people bring rice into their world? This gives us another clue about how humans became farmers," says Crawford, an anthropological archaeologist who studies the relationships between people and plants in prehistory.

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Studying the Expansion of the Squash Bee With PreColumbian Agriculture

Using genetic markers, researchers have for the first time shown how cultivating a specific crop led to the expansion of a pollinator species. In this case, the researchers found that the spread of a bee species in pre-Columbian Central and North America was tied to the spread of squash agriculture.

"We wanted to understand what happens when the range of a bee expands," says Margarita López-Uribe, a postdoctoral researcher at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper describing the work. "What does that mean for its genetic variability? And if the genetic variability declines, does that harm the viability of the species?"

To explore these questions, researchers looked at the squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa), which is indigenous to what is now central Mexico and the southwestern United States. Squash bees are specialists, collecting pollen solely from the flowers of plants in the genus Cucurbita, such as squash, zucchini and pumpkins.

Before contact with Europeans, native American peoples had begun cultivating Cucurbita crops. Over time, these agricultural practices spread to the north and east.

"We wanted to know whether P. pruinosa spread along with those crops," López-Uribe says.

To find out, researchers looked at DNA from squash bee individuals, collected from throughout the species' range. P. pruinosa can now be found from southern Mexico to California and Idaho in the west, and from Georgia in the southeast to Quebec in the north.

By assessing genetic markers in each bee's DNA, the researchers could identify genetic signatures associated with when and where the species expanded.

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Where did Your Food Originate?

Origins of food crops connect countries worldwide

Authors:

Khoury et al

Abstract:

Research into the origins of food plants has led to the recognition that specific geographical regions around the world have been of particular importance to the development of agricultural crops. Yet the relative contributions of these different regions in the context of current food systems have not been quantified. Here we determine the origins (‘primary regions of diversity’) of the crops comprising the food supplies and agricultural production of countries worldwide. We estimate the degree to which countries use crops from regions of diversity other than their own (‘foreign crops’), and quantify changes in this usage over the past 50 years. Countries are highly interconnected with regard to primary regions of diversity of the crops they cultivate and/or consume. Foreign crops are extensively used in food supplies (68.7% of national food supplies as a global mean are derived from foreign crops) and production systems (69.3% of crops grown are foreign). Foreign crop usage has increased significantly over the past 50 years, including in countries with high indigenous crop diversity. The results provide a novel perspective on the ongoing globalization of food systems worldwide, and bolster evidence for the importance of international collaboration on genetic resource conservation and exchange.

Tracking Austronesian Expansion Through Crop Signatures

Ancient crops provide first archaeological signature of the westward Austronesian expansion

Authors:

Crowther et al

Abstract:

The Austronesian settlement of the remote island of Madagascar remains one of the great puzzles of Indo-Pacific prehistory. Although linguistic, ethnographic, and genetic evidence points clearly to a colonization of Madagascar by Austronesian language-speaking people from Island Southeast Asia, decades of archaeological research have failed to locate evidence for a Southeast Asian signature in the island’s early material record. Here, we present new archaeobotanical data that show that Southeast Asian settlers brought Asian crops with them when they settled in Africa. These crops provide the first, to our knowledge, reliable archaeological window into the Southeast Asian colonization of Madagascar. They additionally suggest that initial Southeast Asian settlement in Africa was not limited to Madagascar, but also extended to the Comoros. Archaeobotanical data may support a model of indirect Austronesian colonization of Madagascar from the Comoros and/or elsewhere in eastern Africa.

AeroFarms' Massive Vertical Farm

This new facility is comparable in efficiency to what is currently the world’s largest vertical farm in Japan, but nearly three times the size. Staggering its crops is part of the success behind AeroFarm’s strategy at their new and existing locations – at a given facility they are able to switch between 22 crops per year. Their all-season growth works with specialized LED lights and climate controls all without the need for sunlight or soil.

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Could RIce Give Hints to the Settlement of Madagascar?

Archaeologists studying the distribution of ancient rice believe they may be close to solving one of the enduring mysteries of the ancient world - how people of South East Asian origin ended up living on the African island of Madagascar, 6,000 km away.

Teams from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Queensland excavated 18 sites in Madagascar, Comoros, and along the East African coast and recovered over 2,500 seed remains. The researchers were able to show that typically South East Asian crops, such as rice and mung bean, are found on Madagascar and Comoros, while contemporary sites in Africa largely relied on indigenous crops.

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Will Digital Farming Cause a Shift in the Agricultural Chemical Sector?

Global pesticides, seeds and fertilizer companies may be forced to re-engineer their business models as farmers adopt specialist technology that helps maximize harvests while reducing the use of crop chemicals.

New businesses are springing up that promise to tell farmers how and when to till, sow, spray, fertilize or pick crops based on algorithms using data from their own fields.

Their emphasis on reducing the use of chemicals and minerals known as farming inputs is a further challenge for an industry already struggling with weak agricultural markets worldwide.

"If our only goal is to sell as much inputs as possible by the liters of chemicals, I think we would have a real problem going forward," said Liam Condon, head of Crop Science at Bayer, the world's second-largest pesticides supplier.

Bayer bought proPlant, a developer of software for plant health diagnostics, earlier this year. Rivals are also investing in digital farming with the aim of generating service revenues that could offset any future drop in chemicals volumes.

"If you only spray half of the field that's much less inputs," Condon added. "The knowledge to get to the fact that you only spray that part of the field -- that, you can sell."

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Live in SF or NY & Still Want Garden Fresh Veggies? The Foop is here!

f you've got a green thumb but no space to work your garden magic, a Japanese company might just have the thing to help quell your plant cultivation cravings.

Named the "Foop" (short for food and people) and developed by a company called C'estec, the smart device, roughly the size of a dual shelf toaster, lets you grow small crops of vegetables in your kitchen.

The product has come about to help those in Tokyo who want to grow plants and vegetables but, like may people living in large metropolitan cities, don't have sufficient garden space to do so.

The Foop houses a set of moisture-rich sponge pods, in which you'll plant your seeds. After that, you pair the device with your smartphone to monitor the growing conditions. You'll get a prediction of how long the plant will take to fully grow, as well as the ability to alter lighting, heat and humidity to ensure you get healthy and vibrant vegetables.

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CRISPR Cleared for Commericial Mushrooms

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) will not regulate a mushroom genetically modified withthe gene-editing tool CRISPR–Cas9.

The long-awaited decision means that the mushroom can be cultivated and sold without passing through the agency's regulatory process—making it the first CRISPR-edited organism to receive a green light from the US government.

“The research community will be very happy with the news,” says Caixia Gao, a plant biologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology in Beijing, who was not involved in developing the mushroom. “I am confident we'll see more gene-edited crops falling outside of regulatory authority.”

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Agriculture in Space: Will Vegans be the Colonists of the Solar System?

I believe most readers of this blog have seen Ridley Scott’s The Martian and perhaps have even read Andy Weir’s book. Our hero Mark Watney is stranded on Mars and has to overcome a series of crises in order to survive, including growing food. Entertainment aside, the question of how could we grow crops on other worlds is a serious one. As an agronomist, a practitioner of the scientific discipline that conducts analysis and experiments so as to offer advice to farmers, I offer here my take on the subject.

The issue of growing food on other worlds seems to be generally neglected in science fiction. It tends to be brushed over through the use of replicators, miraculously processed food that turns into a scrumptious meal with a few drops of water or other similar plot devices. Until these devices are invented it is better to speculate using existing technology. The majority of the suburban and urban populations are not aware of modern agricultural practices, having a mental image of a rural utopia that reflects decades or centuries past.

Also, farming practices in each country tend to reflect its socioeconomic conditions and level of development: the best method to grow food in the confined and limited space of a colony is often not the one practiced by farms near where you live. For this article I will give a special emphasis on Mars, because our knowledge of the planet is better than that of other heavenly bodies and because of its relative suitability compared to other worlds. This article is divided into two parts dealing with plant and animal production.

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How Long Until They Call it 'Zombie Plants?'

Millet Played an Important Role in Early Agriculture

New research shows a cereal familiar today as birdseed was carried across Eurasia by ancient shepherds and herders laying the foundation, in combination with the new crops they encountered, of 'multi-crop' agriculture and the rise of settled societies. Archaeologists say 'forgotten' millet has a role to play in modern crop diversity and today's food security debate.

The domestication of the small-seeded cereal millet in North China around 10,000 years ago created the perfect crop to bridge the gap between nomadic hunter-gathering and organised agriculture in Neolithic Eurasia, and may offer solutions to modern food security, according to new research.

Now a forgotten crop in the West, this hardy grain - familiar in the west today as birdseed - was ideal for ancient shepherds and herders, who carried it right across Eurasia, where it was mixed with crops such as wheat and barley. This gave rise to 'multi-cropping', which in turn sowed the seeds of complex urban societies, say archaeologists.

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