Sunderbans National Park, West Bengal
Agripreneurship
A wonderful aspect of both young people and entrepreneurs is their ability to find creative solutions to apparently insoluble problems. The two overlap beautifully within the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) and the Youth Agripreneurs Project (YAP), where the goal is to pilot innovation to help rural communities world wide.
Kulisha, which is the verb ‘to feed’ in Swahili, the national language of Kenya, is a proposed project that addresses both the problem of creating a sustainable food source in Kenya and the extractive fishing methods of coastal trawlers. Aquaculture is an important food industry in East Africa, but the method of using fish meal from wild caught anchovies is destructive on all levels. Kulisha’s goal is to produce sustainable fish feed in Kenya made from black soldier fly larva.
Our idea, Kulisha, will provide a low-cost, high-quality sustainable fish feed made from black soldier fly larvae. We will sell dried insects to these rural fish farmers to replace the anchovies they are using to mix their own. In addition, we’ll produce a nutrient-rich fertilizer as a by-product from raising the insects which will be sold at a low cost to local crop farmers. It is our long term goal to formulate and sell our own feed. Continue reading
El Mayoreo
The Mayoreo is the largest farmer’s market in Alajuela and my weekly or bimonthly visits have become one of my favorite routine outings. I can’t claim that it has been so since the beginning, but I have progressively deciphered the persuasive “charm” of the sellers and come to appreciate the fidelity of buyer-seller kinships.
My first visit to the Mayoreo was overwhelming. There are rows upon rows of vibrantly colored produce and fruit, people swaying with the rhythm of the crowds, and farmers howling prices in the noisy air. I felt lost. I had no idea where to start, so I committed to the first row I came upon and looked for the items that were written on my grocery list. My tactic consisted of timidly shuffling towards a stand until the vendor took notice of the potential “business” opportunity and in a boisterous yet coaxing manner lured me closer to his stand. I tried my hardest to blend in with the crowd and give the impression of being an experienced buyer, but the buyer/seller dynamic was a whole different dimension that I would not be able to comprehend and employ until several more visits.
Bird of the Day: Asian Paradise Flycatcher
female – Sivarpanam Palace, Pudukkottai, Tamil Nadu
Methane Is Madness, Central New York
No one contributing to these pages has (yet) taken protest quite this far. We are not surprised to see the man in the blue jacket getting arrested, on principle, but the others listed below–none with as famous a name but all living in a famously protest-inclined part of New York State–make us wonder whether we have what it takes:
Bill McKibben Arrested at Civil Disobedience Action Against Gas Storage at Seneca Lake
Famed author and climate activist joins 56 people from 20 NYS counties to form human blockade at the gates of Crestwood Midstream, demands halt to climate-damaging fracked gas infrastructure, as total number of arrests in sustained campaign hits 537
Watkins Glen, NY – The fight over the fate of the Finger Lakes became national today when best-selling author, environmentalist, and founder of the international climate campaign, 350.org, Bill McKibben joined the opposition. McKibben, 55, was arrested this morning with 56 area residents as part of an ongoing civil disobedience campaign against proposed gas storage in Seneca Lake’s abandoned salt caverns. Continue reading
Colorful Scientific News From Kerala
The rediscovered plants, Impatiens concinna, Impatiens sasidharanii, Impatiens sasidharanii var hirsute and Impatiens neo-modesta, are found to have great medicinal value.
Even without the medicinal value component of this discovery, we would consider this good news:
Four ‘extinct’ plant species rediscovered
Four species of Impatiens (Kasi Thumba) plants believed to have gone extinct were rediscovered from the Western Ghats recently. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Asian Paradise flycatcher
male – Calicut, Kerala
Buffalo Is Back, But…
The Guardian story below captures vividly the meaning of the law of unintended consequences that sometimes governs in cases of conservation:
The American bison once faced extinction – now they’re being culled. Native American photographer Joe Whittle attends a hunt held by tribal members
by Joe Whittle at Yellowstone National Park
Every winter the small town of Gardiner, Montana, welcomes Native American tribal members from around the Inland Northwest. Hospitality businesses are happy to see them arrive during the off-season, but they’re not the only ones – ranchers are thrilled.
The tribal members are there to hunt American bison (or buffalo) that wander out of Yellowstone national park to find forage during winter. Bison are naturally migrating animals, and as the frozen snows of winter make finding sustenance difficult and competitive, herds start to head to lower elevations to seek sufficient feed.
The north entrance of Yellowstone is at the edge of Gardiner, and the wild roaming bison that leave the park often walk right into town or on to private property. That’s when the interests of the bison and private landowners begin to conflict. Continue reading
If You Happen To Be In New York City
PHOTOGRAPH BY DINA LITOVSKY FOR THE NEW YORKER
We took a respite from thinking about Ethiopian food for some months, following our brief exploration of Ethiopia but this item in the current issue of the New Yorker reminds us of why that all held our attention so firmly. It gets us thinking about a return trip to Ethiopia. It has us wondering where have the last 363 days gone? Whet the appetite here:
Abyssinia
For lovers of Ethiopian food, recent years were marked by two seismic events in Harlem. First, Tsion Café and Bakery opened on Sugar Hill, serving steaming piles of stew atop injera.
Bird of the Day: Black-and-yellow Silky-flycatcher
male – Poás Volcano, Costa Rica
If You Happen To Be in Dubai
Collaborative relationships are beautiful things. Most of human endeavors lend themselves to collaboration, and art is no exception. The stereotype of solo artist in studio is an old one, but in truth inspiration rarely occurs in isolation, and art doesn’t develop in a vacuum. Collaboration and community between artists, artists and patrons, or artists and those who appreciate art has existed in some form ever since the first charcoal marks on cave walls. Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Black-shouldered Kite
Bangalore, Karnataka
When Collaboration Is Everything, It Can Be Awesome
“Sandcastle No. 3,” drawn on a single grain of sand, part of a Vik Muniz series from 2013.CreditVik Muniz, via Sikkema, Jenkins & Co.
We like it, for what should be obvious reasons:
At M.I.T., Science Embraces a New Chaos Theory: Art
Bird of the Day: Collared Kingfisher
Sunderbans National Park, West Bengal
More On Wintergatan
When we recently posted on this newfangled musical contraption we could not find any further information about it. Lo and behold, after a drought sometimes when it rains it pours. Today, National Public Radio (USA) has this:
The “Marble Machine” is a musical instrument by way of a Rube Goldberg contraption, the love child of a barrel organ, a kick drum, a vibraphone and a bass — all powered by hand-cranked gears and 2,000 steel marbles.
The machine was built by Swedish musician Martin Molin, who fronts the Swedish band Wintergartan… Continue reading
The Mad Hatterpillar
The Mad Hatterpillar, Uraba lugens, larval stage of an Australian moth. Image © Nuytsia@Tas via WIRED Magazine.
The image above may seem a little gruesome if you hear that the pictured caterpillar has a collection of old skulls attached to the top of its own its spiky, irritating-to-the-touch hairs. But the larval insect isn’t a true headhunter, since the eery tower above the caterpillar’s crown is in fact made of its own exoskeleton pieces from previous moltings of its skin. Ed Yong reports on new research regarding a caterpillar that has been known for many decades but is still being studied for explanations on the strange cranium-collecting behavior:
Some caterpillars defend themselves from predators using toxic chemicals, repugnant smells, or stinging hairs. Some camouflage themselves. Some mimic snakes. Some recruit ant bodyguards. Some create protective fortresses, or make warning clicks, or vomit up their guts.
And then there’s Uraba lugens, an Australian moth colloquially known as the gum-leaf skeletoniser, and even more colloquially known as the Mad Hatterpillar. Like all caterpillars, it grows by shedding its hard outer shell before expanding the soft body beneath.
Roasting Xandari Coffee
About a month ago I reported that coffee was going strong here at the resort, and since then we’ve been serving our own Xandari-grown coffee here at the restaurant during breakfast hours nearly every day possible, based on availability of the roasted product. In the video above, you can see Continue reading
Bird of the Day: Pallid Harrier
Blackbuck National Park at Velavadar, Gujarat
Kava, For Whatever Reason
In an increasingly health-conscious New York, some would-be boozehounds are turning to kava, made from a South Pacific-originated plant, as a substitute for alcohol. PHOTOGRAPH BY KIRSTIN SCHOLTZ / WSL VIA GETTY
Never heard of it before, but now it is on our agenda:
“ALCOHOL IS SO 2014. TRY KAVA,” suggests a sandwich board on Tenth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, in the East Village. Whether by design or not, this block has become a retro-futurist downtown cornucopia of health, wellness, and New Agey philosophy. It is home to, among other establishments, a lush and gaudy store that peddles healing crystals; the beloved Russian and Turkish baths; a store called the Molecule Project, which sells artisanal tap water squeezed of any impurity; and a place named Body Evolution, which boasts the “largest and most fully equipped GYROTONIC® studio in Manhattan.” And then there is Kavasutra, the block’s newest addition, specializing in drinks made from the root of a South Pacific-originated plant called kava. Designed like a real bar but booze-free, Kavasutra is a New York City experiment that asks its patrons to imagine the possibility of a cosmopolitan social life without alcohol. Continue reading
New Vegetarian Cookbooks
From Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen
From Phaidon, a new series that has our attention:
…This spring sees Phaidon will publish its first vegetarian-only cookbook for 10 years. Indeed, we are bringing out three vegetarian titles: The Middle Eastern Vegetarian Cookbook by the Lebanese writer and cook Salma Hage; artist Olafur Eliasson’s Studio Olafur Eliasson: The Kitchen, a collection of recipes the artist and his co-workers enjoy sharing together for lunch; and Icelandic chef and restaurateur Solla Eiríksdóttir’s Raw: Recipes for a Modern Vegetarian Lifestyle. Continue reading
Organikos 