http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/index.php/2010/03/appropriate-technology/ Academics, industrialists and farmers give their views on food security Fri, 06 Jan 2012 10:51:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1.2 http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/index.php/2010/03/appropriate-technology/comment-page-1/#comment-119 Pest Control London Wed, 26 May 2010 13:48:48 +0000 http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/?p=135#comment-119 Have you heard about the method used by armies to obtain drinking water in baron environments, using a huge area of cling film to siphon moisture rising off a desert surface? Simple enough technology but who's doing this? Have you heard about the method used by armies to obtain drinking water in baron environments, using a huge area of cling film to siphon moisture rising off a desert surface? Simple enough technology but who’s doing this?

]]> http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/index.php/2010/03/appropriate-technology/comment-page-1/#comment-109 Phil Gates Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:04:45 +0000 http://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/blog/?p=135#comment-109 Excellent post. Back in the 1980s I had research links with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas at Tel Hadya in Syria. One of the most impressive pieces of 'appropriate technology' that I witnessed there involved simply planting out all the varieties of chickpea from their germplasm bank in autumn rather than spring and letting the climate select the most cold-tolerant lines. Chickpea was traditionally spring-sown and so suffers from summer drought but by using these climate-selected lines to produce autumn sown varieties that could mature faster and avoid drought considerable yield increases were achieved. The problem with effective 'apprpriate technology' like this is that it will never make it into the high-impact research journals that status-conscious, RAE-driven British scientists are now obsessed with, so research on issues like stress tolerance is inevitable focussed on using the most complex, clever technology at the molecular level which may well take much longer to have a direct impact on the pressing problems of food security. Excellent post. Back in the 1980s I had research links with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas at Tel Hadya in Syria. One of the most impressive pieces of ‘appropriate technology’ that I witnessed there involved simply planting out all the varieties of chickpea from their germplasm bank in autumn rather than spring and letting the climate select the most cold-tolerant lines. Chickpea was traditionally spring-sown and so suffers from summer drought but by using these climate-selected lines to produce autumn sown varieties that could mature faster and avoid drought considerable yield increases were achieved. The problem with effective ‘apprpriate technology’ like this is that it will never make it into the high-impact research journals that status-conscious, RAE-driven British scientists are now obsessed with, so research on issues like stress tolerance is inevitable focussed on using the most complex, clever technology at the molecular level which may well take much longer to have a direct impact on the pressing problems of food security.

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