Matteo Petitti – CCAFS MSc Research Blog
Evolutionary wheat breeding in Italy: a farmer-driven climate change adaptation strategy for low-input and organic agriculture
Biologist, science communicator and podcaster Jeremy Cherfas, visits Modesto Petacciato’s farm in Molise, south-east Italy, during the “Let’s Cultivate Diversity” event, June 2017. The event revolves on the deployment of evolutionary populations of cereals in marginal hilly lands, under low-input or organic management.
On 8-10 June 2017 at Rosario Floriddia‘s Farm, Peccioli, Pisa, Rete Semi Rurali (RSR) celebrated 10 years of activity with three days of study, discussion and celebration of Italy’s rich agricultural biodiversity. 116 different local varieties and populations of durum, turanicum and soft wheat were standing side by side in the field displaying the wealth of diversity held by RSR in their community seed bank “Casa della Semente”. Just beside this living library of sorts, the randomised block trials with 14 soft wheat and 14 durum wheat entries were ready for the participatory evaluation by the 50 delegates who arrived on the first day. Continue reading “Evolutionary wheat populations to enter the Italian formal seed system”
As part of Rete Semi Rurali‘s series of events dedicated to cereals, on 2nd June I attended the event Let’s Cultivate Diversity in Modesto Petacciato’s farm in San Giuliano di Puglia (Molise), on the hills overlooking the Adria sea to the east, and the planes of Puglia to the south. The event was centred around cultivation and use of evoulutionary populations (EP) of soft wheat, durum wheat and barley, which Modesto has been growing on his organic certified 30ha farm since 2011. Continue reading “Cereal populations in the hills of Molise – the way forward for organic wheat growing”
According to a recently published EU report on productivity vs. sustainability in EU agriculture, Ireland sports the lowest revenue per unit of GHG emission. An alternative way of looking at the sustainability of the agriculture sector than proposed by Origin Green.
“Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist” (Kenneth Boulding, economist)
Prof Carlo Leifert of Newcastle University gives an excellent overview of resource use efficiency in low-input farming at the Oxford Real Farming Conference 2017