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The Biodiversity That People Made
The Biodiversity That People MadeSnaking along the border of Minnesota and the Dakotas, the Red River valley has long been one of North America's leading grain-producing regions. Blessed with fertile prairie soils deep enough "to bury a man standing," Red River farmers have intensified their production in recent decades, and planted more and more of their land to just two crops, wheat and barley.
Such specialization is supposed to be the key to success in the brave new world of multinational agribusiness. Yet the last few years have been anything but bountiful for most Red River farmers. In the early 1990s, following several years of abnormally cool, wet weather, their fields were hit with unprecedented outbreaks of a fungal disease called "wheat scab."
But according to Brian DeVore of the Minnesota-based Land Stewardship Project, the fungus is benefiting from more than just the weather. Many of the region's farmers have recently adopted a "no till" cultivation system that is designed to conserve soil. Standard cultivation prepares the soil for planting by plowing, but as the soil is broken up it becomes vulnerable to erosion. "No till" reduces erosion by leaving the previous year's broken stalks in place and planting through them. Unfortunately, however, those crop residues are a perfect home for the fungus in between growing seasons. A few decades ago, one solution would have been to let cattle graze down the residue, but there are few cattle in the region any more. Cattle production has grown increasingly specialized too; few of the valley's farmers can compete with the enormous livestock operations elsewhere. So the fungus has its way with these vast, monotonous expanses of wheat, one field after another, year in and year out: that must be the wheat scab version of heaven.
The bottom line is that disease and record low grain prices have cost Red River farmers over $4.2 billion since 1992. Nearly half of that loss is directly attributable to the scab. On the Minnesota side of the river, wheat and barley plantings in 1999 were down some 35 percent compared to their levels at the start of the decade. One-fifth of the region's farmers went out of business in 1997 alone.
Such problems are usually debated in economic terms, but they are related just as fundamentally to the loss of biological diversity in agriculture. Biodiversity refers to the variety inherent in life-both the genetic variety within single species and the "species variety" within ecosystems. For most people, the term probably evokes Nature with a capital "N"-tropical rain forests, coral reefs, mountain wildernesses, and other untrammeled corners of our planet. Not surprisingly, most of our efforts to protect biodiversity have focused on such places.
Yet there is another side to biodiversity, one that is very much a part of human history. As agriculture developed over the past eight millennia, farmers domesticated several hundred different crop species, and developed hundreds of thousands of different varieties within those crops. In the hands of early European farmers, for instance, an inconspicuous herb of coastal Mediterranean hillsides gradually became cabbage, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, and somewhat more recently, kohlrabi and brussels sprouts. Native American farmers took five shrub species with small, bright fruit originally adapted to attract birds, and diversified them into hundreds of eye-catching and tongue-searing varieties of chile pepper. This ancient form of "cooperation" between people and plants has produced a vast wealth of genetic diversity within crop species.
Traditional agriculture fosters diversity in another dimension too, particularly on land used, not for commercial production, but primarily for "subsistence production"-that is, land that farmers cultivate for their own households. In just about any part of the world, subsistence production results in a highly diverse agricultural landscape. You'll find intensively cropped fields for staples such as wheat, corn, rice, or potatoes; fallow fields covered in more unkempt vegetation, where the soil is "resting" to regenerate its fertility; an orchard or garden plot for fruits, vegetables, and herbs; a woodlot for fuelwood and other forest products. This kind of land use, replicated on farm after farm, creates substantial ecological diversity.
Today, both forms of agricultural biodiversity are receding in the face of commercial production, which usually demands a high degree of uniformity. The economic and political pressure on farms to grow for the mass market is a pervasive effect of the globalization of agriculture, and in many places, farmers are forsaking the practices that have long fostered biodiversity-practices that have sustained farming for millennia. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that the current agricultural paradigm will be far less sustainable. Intensive monoculture farming is exacting a heavy ecological toll in the form of pesticide and fertilizer pollution, erosion, freshwater depletion, and the destruction of wildlife habitat. And as farmers in such places as the Red River valley have found, the social costs can be very steep as well. The message from such places is now very plain: we've no hope of achieving a sustainable agricultural system unless we can find ways to restore what scientists now call "agrodiversity."
Hot Spot Agriculture
During the 1920s, a brilliant young Russian scientist named Nikolai I. Vavilov undertook to answer a question that must at the time have seemed vast in its implications if rather bizarre: what was the origin and significance of genetic variation among crop plants? Vavilov was a firm adherent to the emerging disciplines of evolutionary theory and genetics, and he approached his studies with enormous intellectual energy. From a home base in St. Petersburg at the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops (which he headed after 1925), Vavilov organized expeditions not only to the fields and gardens of remote corners of the Soviet Union, but also to Iran, Ethiopia, Mexico, Japan, and some 50 other countries. Tens of thousands of different crop specimens made their way into his collections.
Vavilov's career was tragically cut short in 1939 when he was deported to a Siberian labor camp, where he died the following year. But he had lived long enough to produce the first comprehensive picture of agrodiversity. He realized, in the first place, that the world's crop diversity was not distributed randomly; it was instead concentrated in particular regions. In Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, for instance, Vavilov found farmers growing nearly a hundred varieties of "soft" wheat (the kind best suited for making bread)-several times more than had been documented in all of Europe. He argued that the region where a crop showed the greatest number of unique and unusual forms was likely also to be where it was first domesticated (see map, pages 28 and 29). These are also regions where the wild plants from which crops descended-their wild relatives-can often be found growing in nearby natural habitats.
Most of these regions remain "hotspots"of crop diversity today. In the Andes of Peru, for instance, peasant farmers continue to grow thousands of traditional varieties-or "landraces"-of potatoes, corn, and peppers, as well as lesser-known crops such as quinoa (a grain), ulluco (a multihued tuber that thrives at altitudes over 4000 meters), and tarwi (a bean related to the lupine flower).
Vavilov was also one of the first researchers to draw attention to the tremendous environmental and cultural diversity present in traditional small-scale farming. He astutely noted, for instance, that crop genetic diversity was often particularly rich where farmers had to cope with a great deal of variability in local climate, soil conditions, and other environmental factors, as in mountainous regions like the Caucasus and the Andes.
Such regions also contain some of the best examples of agrodiversity on an ecological level. They are ever-changing mosaics of cultivated and fallow fields, hedgerows, orchards, irrigation ponds, windbreaks, woodlots-along with patches and corridors of native vegetation. That, for example, is what anthropologists Christine Padoch and Wil de Jong found when they studied several Ribereño communities on the edge of the Amazon River floodplain in eastern Peru. Ribereños are a people of mixed indigenous and European ancestry, long established in western Amazonia. In just one village, Padoch and de Jong found a dozen distinct kinds of agriculture. Some farmers cut small fields from mature upland rain forest, then burned and planted them with mixtures of up to 60 different crops, following a classic "slash-and-burn" or "swidden" regime. (Such crops are grown intensively for a year or two, then gradually abandoned as the forest regenerates.) Other farmers were planting rice along riverbanks inundated annually by the Amazon floodwaters. Later in the year, these same farmers might clear and plant young regenerating forest for a quick crop of cassava (a starchy tuber). Still other farmers were clearing competing vegetation away from fruit trees within older swidden plots, with the aim of gradually transforming them into native fruit orchards. And nearly every house had a kitchen garden beside it, for a ready source of fruits and vegetables, spices, medicines, and other useful items.
The ecological diversity of traditional farming landscapes can benefit many other species besides people and crops. It can provide important wildlife habitat, as long as hunting pressure is not too extreme. In Europe, for example, over half of all bird species depend on agricultural land for either winter or summer habitat. Tree sparrows and bullfinches sing along English hedgerows; black wheatears and great bustards haunt upland grainfields in Spain after harvests have been gathered in. But as traditional farming has declined across the continent in recent decades, so have populations of scores of bird species.
The biodiversity associated with traditional agriculture is no coincidence-it has arisen precisely because people have actively fostered it. Although, of course, they wouldn't generally put it in these terms, traditional farmers all over the world have long favored biodiversity as a way to maintain longterm productivity. For instance, many indigenous cultures in Mexico and northern Central America have traditionally planted their staple crops of corn, beans, and squash all together rather than in separate fields. Agroecologists Steven Gliessman and M.F. Amador investigated this "polycropping" approach and found that it confers multiple advantages. The beans "fix" organic nitrogen, thereby enhancing soil fertility and improving corn growth. The corn in turn provides a trellis for the bean vines, and the squash plants, with their wide, shady leaves, help keep the weeds down. Overall, the scientists were able to show that total yields of the three crops grown together could be significantly higher than if the same area were sown in monocultures.
Polyculture is also an ancient form of pest control. Planting different crops together tends to create more ecological niches for beneficial organisms, such as parasitic wasps or predatory beetles, which attack pests. Of course, more diverse plantings may also offer more niches for pests and diseases too, but the likelihood of any one organism breaking out in epidemic levels is greatly reduced, since none are likely to affect all crops equally.
Within any particular crop species, genetic diversity has long been important in pest control too. In a genetically diverse planting, some individual plants will likely fare better during an infestation than others, and of course farmers will be quick to notice the best performers. The late Jack Harlan, an economic botanist from the United States, turned up an extreme example of this phenomenon on a visit to Turkey in 1948. He was there to study wheat, and he collected a particularly inauspicious looking specimen in one field: "tall, thin-stemmed, lodges badly [that is, it won't stay upright]...lacks winter hardiness... and has poor baking qualities." Yet when Harlan's seed collection was later evaluated, plant breeders discovered that this variety was "resistant to four races of stripe rust, 35 races of common bunt, ten races of dwarf bunt and [had] good tolerance to flag smut and snow mold." Over the centuries, in years when major outbreaks struck the Turkish fields, that variety might have saved many people from starvation.
Planting multiple varieties of a single crop can provide a kind of "insurance policy" for farmers in other ways as well. In eastern India the staple crop is rice, and in some villages, each farmer sows up to 10 different rice varieties, which vary in the amount of time and moisture they need to mature. That greatly increases the odds of reaping an adequate harvest whether the annual monsoons arrive early, late, sporadically, or in excess. The different maturation times also spread out the labor of planting, weeding, harvesting, and threshing-thereby making life much easier than it would otherwise be.
Diversity also has substantial culinary and esthetic value-another major benefit, as is apparent from the near-universal drive to exploit it in one way or another. Hungarians, for instance, took a particular fancy to chile peppers not long after they were introduced into Europe from the New World at the start of the 1500s. Today Hungarian peppers, known _generally as paprika, are an indispensable element _of the national cuisine and come in a host of varieties with different flavors, colors, and shapes-all of_them developed by farmers and plant breeders over the centuries.
Just about everywhere, you can find farmers who are willing to experiment with new growing practices. But given half a chance, they will usually hedge their bets and reserve some of their land for traditional crops. For several decades, for instance, peasant farmers in the Tulumayo valley of Peru's central Andes have grown potatoes commercially, for the markets of Lima and other cities. Anthropologists Enrique Mayer and Stephen Brush found that the Tulumayo farmers were planting almost 90 percent of their fields to a handful of commercial varieties, but in the remaining 10 percent they mostly grew potatoes for their own cooking pot-and these latter spuds were invariably a diverse collection of traditional landraces. Their refusal to abandon these varieties reflects the central social and ceremonial role that potatoes and other indigenous crops play in native Andean cultures. Yet even the most tradition-conscious farmers now face a host of pressures to abandon their agrodiversity. And many of these pressures have been gathering force for the better part of a century.
Impoverished by Success
At the same time that Vavilov was scouring fields for clues to the origins of crop diversity, another agricultural visionary, the American plant breeder (and later U.S. Secretary of Agriculture) Henry A. Wallace was promoting a new approach to his craft-a technique for creating corn varieties of unprecedented productivity. By Wallace's time, plant breeding as a profession had existed for decades in the United States and many other countries, but professional breeders rarely produced varieties that out-performed the selections that skilled farmers made as a matter of routine.
The emerging science of genetics, however, brought a powerful focus to plant breeding. The new approach favored by Wallace involved making complicated crosses between highly inbred strains of corn, to take advantage of a genetic phenomenon known as "hybrid vigor," in which the first generation of a cross between those inbred strains tended to perform far better than its parents. Wallace also recognized that the high-yield traits were not stable. Planting the seeds of these high-performance hybrids would yield disappointing results, so farmers who wanted to use the hybrid system would have to return year after year to their suppliers for new seed. Hybridization was incompatible with the ancient practice of saving and replanting a part of last year's harvest.
A shrewd entrepreneur as well as a scientist, Wallace knew a good business opportunity when he saw it. His fledgling enterprise, the Hi-Bred Corn Company, was at the forefront of a revolution that would, in a matter of decades, transform U.S. agriculture from a family-based craft to an increasingly centralized commercial industry. (Wallace's company, now a DuPont subsidiary known as Pioneer Hi-Bred, has become the world's largest seed producer.) Jack Kloppenburg, a rural sociologist at the University of Wisconsin, has written that Wallace "understood, perhaps better than any American of his generation, the process by which agricultural production was being integrated into modern industrial capitalism." In 1930, virtually the entire corn crop (and all other crops as well) consisted of traditional "open-pollinated" varieties, whose seeds could be readily saved and replanted. By 1965, nearly 95 percent of all U.S. corn acreage was in hybrid varieties.
Many other aspects of the corn crop changed between 1930 and 1965 too. Muscle power-both human and animal-was replaced by the internal combustion engine. Breeders standardized corn ripening times and stalk height to accommodate an increasingly mechanized harvest. To boost yields further, hybrid varieties were bred to consume as much fertilizer as possible; over that 35-year time-span, U.S. fertilizer use increased 17-fold. Corn yields per unit area quadrupled, allowing the total harvest to rise dramatically even as the annual area planted to corn declined. The farm population declined as well-in the northern corn belt, for instance, the number of farms shrank by 35 percent between 1935 and 1960. And one of the most revealing changes of all involved crop diversity. In 1930 there would have been hundreds if not thousands of local corn varieties in the country's fields. By 1969, a mere six hybrids accounted for 71 percent of all U.S. corn area.
What happened to corn has happened to many other crops as well. In the United States, varietal diversity in most crops plummeted over the course of the 20th century; on average, over 90 percent of the varieties grown in the country a century ago are no longer in commercial production or present in a major seed storage facility. Among lettuce varieties, for example, the losses total 92 percent. Out of 408 pea varieties shown in the seed catalogs of 1903, only 25 have been relocated-a 94 percent reduction. By 1970, just two varieties of peas accounted for 96 percent of the U.S. commercial crop. Nor is this problem peculiar to the United States; although the data can be hard to come by, most of the industrialized world seems to have suffered similar losses.
The genetic diversity of livestock has also been in decline. Jules Pretty, a rural development expert who directs the Centre for Environment and Society at the University of Essex in the U.K., notes that "In Europe, some 750 breeds of horses, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and poultry have gone extinct since the beginning of the 20th century; and a third of the remaining 770 breeds are in danger of disappearing by 2010."
During the 1950s and 1960s, the agricultural "Green Revolution" brought extremely uniform, "high input" varieties to the developing world. (In contrast to landraces, these crops don't generally perform well without substantial doses of artificial fertilizer, pesticides, and water-hence "high input.") In many areas, grain production increased sharply-but at a substantial cost. The old polycultural landscape yielded to monoculture: the new regime usually produced only one commodity, instead of a range of foods, medicines, and so on. And in the staple crops of Asia, Latin America, and Africa, the disease of genetic erosion emerged swiftly. One single variety of wheat blanketed 67 percent of Bangladesh's wheat fields in 1983, and some 30 percent of India's a year later. In 1982, a single high-input rice variety known as "IR-36" was grown on more than 11 million hectares in Asia-an area the size of Guatemala.
In industrialized countries, a great many crop varieties had vanished from field and orchard without any apparent public concern. But by the late 1960s, plant breeders like Erna Bennett and Sir Otto Frankel were raising the alarm over the potential impact of the Green Revolution in developing countries. The rapid response reflects the importance that breeders attached to the world's centers of crop diversity, nearly all of which are in developing countries.
That concern has nothing to do with the picturesque appeal of traditional farming-it's based on the "real world" recognition that agriculture is a form of biological warfare. Under the demanding conditions of high-input commercial farming, even the most rigorously bred varieties do not remain viable for long. Faced with rapidly evolving insects and diseases, with accumulating salt residues from irrigation, and with an assortment of other stresses, the typical commercial variety has a useful life of only about 5 to 10 years. This rapid turnover of varieties has been termed "diversity in time" by plant breeder Don Duvick, in contrast with the "diversity in space" seen in traditional farming. Keeping a constant stream of new varieties in the pipeline requires an extensive breeding infrastructure, involving both the public and private sectors. Professional breeders are now engaged in an enormous high-stakes relay race to develop ever more robust varieties before those already in commercial fields succumb to current stresses.
Even now, in the era of biotechnology and after over a century of professional plant breeding, commercial agriculture is still entangled in a kind of breeder's paradox: the commercial crops remain dependent on regular genetic infusions from the landraces they are displacing. Timothy Swanson, an economist at University College in London, estimates that plant breeders still return each year to landraces and their wild relatives for about 6 percent of the germplasm lines used in their breeding. (The remainder are advanced breeding lines and established commercial varieties.) Six percent per year is a pretty substantial dependence, and there is little prospect of lessening it anytime soon. It is true, of course, that biotechnology has effectively broadened the gene pool available for creating new varieties, but most of the really useful traits, such as increased yield and drought tolerance, involve complex combinations of genes, and cannot be transferred from unrelated or even distantly related organisms. For these traits, breeders must continue to draw on landraces and their close wild kin.
The industrialization of agriculture has also dramatically reduced ecological diversity in farm landscapes. The commercial regime demands an economy of scale, so as production intensifies, the tendency is to bring as much of the farmscape as possible into the monoculture and to reduce or eliminate fallow periods. Under such pressure, the old patchwork of wildlife habitat generally vanishes-witness the population crashes of farmland birds in Europe, or the declines in ducks that breed in the "prairie pothole" wetlands of the U.S. upper midwest. Crop resources lose out in this simplification process as well. For example, according to Gary Paul Nabhan, an ecologist at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, the wild chiles and gourd plants that used to grow abundantly along the margins of bottomland fields in northwest Mexico have declined markedly, now that those fields have been converted into intensive monocultures.
Nor is this simplification just a matter of losing species. It also entails an impoverishment of ecological function: the "services" provided by the old ecological diversity go into decline as well. That's why, in simplified commercial farmscapes, farmers have to apply large amounts of artificial fertilizer to compensate for the loss of processes like fallowing, which restore fertility naturally. They have to apply chemical pesticides to compensate for the loss of natural pest controls like polycropping and complex crop rotations. And if they're growing crops that aren't wind pollinated, they may have to rent hives of insect pollinators (usually the European honeybee), to compensate for the loss of native insects.
The side effects of these substitute services are considerable. Every year, for instance, an estimated 3 million people are poisoned by pesticides. Some of these chemicals are highly persistent, and contamination of groundwater is a growing concern in many heavily farmed regions. (See "Groundwater Shock," January/February 2000.) Such problems can reach far beyond the fields themselves. For example, fertilizer-laced run-off from farms in the U.S. midwest is borne by the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico, where it is apparently helping to trigger massive algal blooms. The blooms deplete the water of oxygen, creating a "dead zone" in which nearly all marine life is asphyxiated-including much of the rich fishery for which the Louisiana coast is famous. Last year, the annual dead zone was the largest ever, covering nearly 20,000 square kilometers, an area the size of the state of New Jersey.
In addition to the damage they're inflicting, these substitute services tend to be much less stable than their traditional analogs because they lack natural complexity. They have little "built-in redundancy" and that makes them, in a sense, accidents waiting to happen. Take pollination, for example. Gary Paul Nabhan and entomologist Stephen Buchmann have documented widespread declines in efficient native pollinators of many crops in North America, from blueberry bees in Maine to alkali bees that have a fondness for alfalfa in the Great Basin. As a result, North American vegetable and fruit production has become highly dependent upon the introduced European honeybee.
Though not particularly efficient pollinators, honeybees are consummate generalists, readily visiting a wide variety of crops, and they are easily managed by people. Over the past several decades, however, millions of North American honeybee colonies have been lost due to a host of problems, the most recent of which is a widespread infestation of two types of introduced parasitic mite. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the country's bee industry is in an "unprecedented crisis," and Nabhan and Buchmann warn that nationwide honeybee declines could reach 80 percent, causing crop losses that may exceed $5 billion annually.
Yet amid the many problems created by what we now consider to be "conventional" agriculture, there are many signs of hope. Scattered about the farming landscapes of developing and industrialized countries alike are farmers who seek alternative approaches to their craft. Some are doggedly maintaining their traditions, like the rice farmers in Java who continue to plant their local, long-stemmed rices in the face _of intense government pressure to convert to monocultures of high-input varieties. Others, like many small-scale organic producers in Europe and the United States, are experimenting with various forms of polyculture. Such efforts represent the future of agrodiversity.
Productivity in a Broader Sense
Two of modern agriculture's luckiest moments may have come in the form of failure. In 1970, a few years after scientists began raising the alarm about the loss of crop genetic diversity, the U.S. corn crop was struck with a leaf blight and the harvest collapsed in many states. A year-and-a-half later, the Soviet winter wheat crop failed after a prolonged winter followed by an unusually dry spring. In both cases, the crop's vulnerability was traced to the genetic uniformity of the varieties planted. Crop genetics had suddenly become a matter for international policy, and in 1974, international aid donors and agricultural research centers joined forces with the United Nations to establish the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources-now known as the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute, or IPGRI.
The institute and its various allies initially tended to see their job as essentially a rescue mission. IPGRI's mandate was to assemble a global network of gene banks-facilities that store large quantities of carefully maintained seeds, which are grown out occasionally for harvest back into the collection. (Plants with seeds that cannot be stored for long periods are usually maintained as living nursery stock.) Today, the network includes university breeding programs, government seed banks, and international agricultural research centers. The total number of sampled varieties, or "accessions," now exceeds 6 million. Not surprisingly, most accessions have been drawn from the world's leading staple crops, especially wheat, rice, corn, and beans.
These accessions are a priceless resource. Professional breeders use them as a matter of routine, and they are called upon in times of crisis too. They have, for instance, been used to resupply traditional varieties to regions where agriculture has been severely disrupted by war or famine-as when traditional rice varieties were restored to Cambodia in the 1980s, after the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge.
There is more to seed-saving, however, than what is practiced in large, centralized gene banks. About the same time that IPGRI was founded, Kent and Diane Whealy, a recently married couple in the U.S. state of Iowa, received seeds of a pink tomato, a runner bean, and a morning glory variety from Diane's grandfather, a lifelong gardener. The varieties had been grown in Diane's family for over four generations. Her grandfather died shortly after making his gift, and the Whealys realized that the fate of these varieties was now in their hands.
Curious about how many other people were maintaining such "heirloom" seeds, they began writing to gardening magazines and contacting other backyard gardeners. Thus was born the Seed-Savers Exchange (SSE), a network now including over 8,000 members who grow and trade heirloom and "open-pollinated" varieties of fruits, vegetables, and flowers-including such hard-to-find items as Wolf River apples (which can weigh up to a pound each) and the Menominee squash, a variety similar to those once grown by Native American farmers in the U.S. midwest. This year, the SSE catalog contains over 11,800 varieties available for exchange or purchase-some 4,000 more than are offered by the entire mail-order garden seed industry in North America, an industry that has undergone unprecedented consolidation in recent decades.
In developing countries, most farmers still save and replant their own varieties-at least for subsistence use. Yet the leadership of especially visionary farmers remains essential to maintaining diversity. In the Garhwal region of northern India, for example, a farmer named Vijay Jarhdhari has sparked a modest revival of the varieties traditionally used in that region's hill farms. After becoming disenchanted with the side-effects of the agrochemicals required by high-input rice and soybean strains, Jarhdhari and his wife decided to return to the older varieties of rice, millet, lentils, and other crops previously grown on the region's farms. But they themselves had lost these seeds, and as Jarhdhari began to ask around, he found that many traditional varieties were on the brink of vanishing altogether.
Persistent searching eventually paid off. Jarhdhari and a few other like-minded farmers managed to assemble a collection of more than 100 traditional rice varieties, 80 beans, and other regional grain and oilseed specialties. Beginning in 1990, they initiated a "Save the Seed Movement" that has attracted hundreds of participants to some events, and their collection of local varieties continues to grow. Farmers active in the movement are also eager to promote traditional intercropping methods that incorporate up to a dozen grains, herbs, and vegetables in an integrated cycle. Jarhdhari argues that the economic effects of such efforts are as important as the ecological ones. "It is not enough to simply collect seeds," he says. "We have to make farming in the villages in Garhwal worthwhile again."
Farmers like Jarhdhari are natural allies for an innovative form of crop development that is attracting the attention of more and more professional plant breeders. Typically, professional breeders strive to create uniform or "pure-bred" strains of the crops they are working with. These pure-bred lines are designed to be widely adaptable, and it is only towards the end of the breeding process that the lines are actually evaluated by farmers. A growing number of participatory programs, however, seek to involve farmers in all stages of the breeding process. In the most innovative ones, breeders and farmers work directly in the latters' fields to evaluate, select, combine, and improve a wide range of varieties-including both local strains and promising varieties from other regions. This approach has the potential to combine the best of both worlds: it can improve the quality of locally adapted agriculture without resorting to varietal uniformity. Plant breeders John Whitcombe and Arun Joshi have conducted such programs for rainfed (that is, non-irrigated) crops in India and high-altitude rice in Nepal, and they argue that these decentralized breeding approaches can maintain-and potentially even enhance-local genetic diversity.
With the help of scientists and conservationists, innovative farmers are also restoring ecological diversity-and the more durable set of "services" that it provides. In Iowa, the state with the second largest agricultural sector in the United States (after California), a 500-member group called Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI) is collaborating with university researchers to identify practices that can enhance the ecological integrity of farmland while cutting costs for the farmer. Since 1985, PFI members have carried out over 400 field trials on alternative crop rotations and weed management methods, on non-crop plantings along field margins to maintain beneficial insect habitat, and many similar innovations. Pesticides, especially, are expensive, and with Iowa's two leading crops-corn and soybeans-selling in 1999 for substantially less than what it cost to produce them, an increasing number of farmers are interested in using diversity to cut costs.
If such approaches are to succeed, however, they must prove themselves not just in the field but in the market. Innovative farmers need consumer support-and increasingly, they're getting it. The global market for organically grown foods, for example, has expanded by 20 percent annually during the 1990s. Another strong sign of popular support is the _growing number of seasonal farmers' markets in North America and Europe, where producers sell locally grown foodstuffs directly to consumers. According to Jules Pretty, at least 2,400 farmers' markets operate in the United States, serving some 1 million patrons each week. Through this direct retail, farmers collect a higher return for their produce than they would get from the major food processors, and they are able to sell many more varieties than the processors would buy. One study in Madison, _Wisconsin found that during a three-month period, the bustling weekly farmers' market offered over three times as many distinct crop varieties as did the city's supermarkets.
Yet another sign of the growing consumer appreciation for agrodiversity is the emergence of Slow Food, an international network of some 70,000 chefs, artisanal farmers, and food aficionados. Slow Food recently inaugurated an "Ark of Taste" program to highlight exceptional foodstuffs in danger of disappearing, and to encourage consumers and restauranteurs to revive them. Among the listings to date are rare varieties of crops and domestic animals, such as the porc noir gascon, a small, black French pig known for the quality of its meat, but now kept only in small numbers in the high Pyrenees and the Garonne region. Also included are certain small-scale farm products, such as krassotyri, a distinctive sheep's milk cheese streaked with wine dregs, which is _produced now by only a few women on the Greek island of Kos.
Discerning consumers can make a difference when it comes to the major agricultural commodities too. For instance, traditional coffee plantations in Latin America provide important habitat for many songbird species, particularly those that migrate south each year from North America. In these plantations, shrub-sized coffee plants are generally grown in partial shade, under a varied canopy of native forest trees, usually several nitrogen-fixing legume species. Beginning in the 1980s, however, many growers began planting new "sun coffee" varieties, which promised higher yields. Sun coffee requires full light to produce well, so the plantation overstory has begun to disappear. The new varieties also require much heavier applications of pesticide and fertilizer-a further ecological disruption. Luis Gaitán, a Guatemalan scientist who has inventoried birds, reptiles, and insects on sun-grown coffee plots, calls them "biological deserts."
Recognizing the environmental threat posed by sun coffee, a conservation organization called the Rainforest Alliance has established a certification program for coffee produced on shade plantations. Participating farms must maintain forest cover and meet a series of environmental and social criteria for sound management, such as limiting soil erosion and providing workers with environmental education. Certified shade-grown coffee is now available through at least 24 different coffee distributors and mail-order retailers in the United States.
As encouraging as these examples are, the scale of what remains to be accomplished is daunting. In the case of shade coffee, for instance, only about 41,000 hectares of plantations have been certified to date, out of some 7 million hectares of coffee in all of Latin America-and the area devoted to sun varieties and other forms of intensive production continues to rise. In general, such efforts to promote diversity are still a small part of the agricultural sector.
The current momentum of agro-industrial development would be considerably reduced were it not directly fostered by a slew of policies and subsidies in nearly every country. In both the United States and the European Union, for example, most government crop supports target just a handful of major crops, rather than the more diverse crop combinations favored by smaller farms. It's hardly surprising, then, that most beneficiaries are large commercial farms, not small-scale farmers. In many developing countries, such as those in southern Africa, farmers cannot qualify for government agricultural credit programs unless they agree to plant high-input varieties.
Governments commonly cite laudable objectives for these policies, such as increasing national self-sufficiency in staple foods. But monoculture farming does not make ecological sense, and increasingly its economic justification is coming under question too. A growing body of evidence suggests that large operations are actually far less productive and efficient than areas of equivalent size and quality worked by smaller producers. And big operations generate far more waste and pollution per unit area.
Ultimately, the fate of agrodiversity will be decided by the degree of importance we attach to farming as a social activity. Diversity will not persist without thriving rural communities to support it. Conversely, the preservation of diversity can yield major social benefits. That principle is reappearing even in the Red River valley, in the activities of people like Jaime DeRosier, a farmer who is not content with the standard wheat and barley regimen. DeRosier also grows organic sunflowers, corn, and soybeans in complex rotations, deploying up to six different cover crops to keep pests and weeds under control. He plants nitrogen-fixing legumes to boost soil fertility, and allows for occasional summer fallow periods. He is even thinking of adding specialty crops like green beans and sugar beets. As one of the few financially stable farmers in the region these days, his advice is constantly sought by other growers looking to make a change for the diverse.
In farmers like Jaime DeRosier and Vijay Jarhdhari, we have the makings of another and very different kind of Green Revolution-one that could put global agriculture on a sustainable footing. But this is not a transition that farmers can make on their own. The question is: are the rest of us-as consumers, voters, and policy makers-willing to back them up?
John Tuxill is a research fellow with the Worldwatch Institute. This is the first in a series of articles on the environmental and social importance of agrodiversity.


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how's everyone's cycling going??
i'm semi-serious training for the dynamo...
can anyone recommend any good rides in and around london, preferably with nice tarmac?!
how's everyone's cycling going??
i'm semi-serious training for the dynamo...
can anyone recommend any good rides in and around london, preferably with nice tarmac?!
Went over to France last week and rode on stage four of the tour - just got up very early and followed the route before they closed the roads. Stopped 19k before the end, watched the tour come through and then rode on the closed roads with everybody hooting horns and cheering us on as we headed into Joigny. Coppers wouldn't let us do the final kilometre but overall a fantastic day.
The stage included a number of Category 4 climbs, and a number that didn't even warrant a mention despite what my legs thought!
I am riding to Paris from Southend next week - we reckon 4 days to do it.
interested in how many people are giving it a go
the rain definitely made it feel a bit more epic than it might otherwise particularly coming out of the feed station but was lovely to turn up at Dunwich and see the weather finally turn it on...
fuck.... can't believe it's been a year since the dynamo!
i'm doing it again this year... anyone else in???
I'm not - kinda think that maybe one year I ought to give it a go.
Am going to do London Southend which is a good route over 60 miles - will try and get ahead of the mountain bikes with their evian gaffer taped to their crossbars and push on for a time around 3 hours if the wind isn't too savage.
Am also seriously thinking about the Etape for next year. And maybe some late season sportives.
Tour starts on saturday - what are the chances fo Cav finishing the day in Yellow?
has anyone done london-brighton before
im thinking of doing it with some friends, just leisure, no time trials or nothing
ive heard of a lot of people do it, its only 50miles or so, are there pretty good cycle routes to brighton, and are there any maps about for the trip, i quite fancy just following a route and not trying to pick my way through lanes
usually for tours i go to stamfords map shop, havent given it a go yet, but will hit it up when i have a moment
I know there's plenty of cynicism here about any sport that involves sitting down but...
Cavendish is in the pink jersey at the Giro - the first time any brit has managed the feat. He's spent the last year kicking evryone's arse and I think should be applauded - he could well be our forst ever green jersey winner on the Champs Elysee in July.
anyway, thought I'd mention it...
cavendish is seriously unbelievable. what's the record for stage victories in the tour de france?
i done london to brighton and the dynamo in the same week. they're both a piece of piss. you dont need to train. its a waste of time. although i did get very lost trying to find my way to brighton and ended up rising along the hard shoulder of whatever very fast A-road gets you to brighton. that was quite scary. so you probably need a map. it was me and my mate, we done it from his house near caledonian road, just becasue we were bored.
i'm on for my hat-trick of dynamos this summer.. can't wait actually cos i did the first two riding fixed gear but will have my new road bike built up for this one..
i really hope armstrong has massive crash and suffers extensive injuries on his TdF return.
9 and a half stone of british beef.
my brother done it on a training regime of lager, skunk, kebabs and fried chicken
i remember when i done it, you were like, yeah im going to do it, i'll see you there, then you lagged it off.

subset: commoncrawl


text: We envy Kate Hudson's perfect California golden locks, so when we spotted bright blue highlights in her hair on the set of the new movie Bride Wars we just couldn't believe our eyes! Luckily, it's just a wig she is donning for her character — could it be the "something blue" for the film's wedding day scene? Kate and co-star Anne Hathaway seem to be having loads of fun on the set of the new comedy, so we can't wait to see what else they have in store for us. Tell us: Are blue highlights something Kate should try out in real life? What do you think about the look on her?


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BOSTON, Mass.—UMass Boston women's soccer struck for two goals in the first 21 minutes and never looked back, as the Beacons (6-3) downed Colby-Sawyer College (9-2) 3-0 Wednesday afternoon at the Clark Athletic Field.
Krista Ledin (Bridgewater, Mass.) registered two goals and added an assist, while Tayla Andrews added the third tally of the day, to help the Beacons earn their fourth straight win.
Senior co-captain Sam Cristoforo (Rockland, Mass.) recorded her second assist of the year, to lift UMass Boston to their fourth win in five tries at home.
Redshirt sophomore Kristen Spain (Quincy, Mass.) extended her shutout streak to three consecutive games, by making two saves on two shots for her fourth blank sheet of the year.
Colby-Sawyer saw its five-game shutout and winning streak come to an end, as sophomore Karley Hamilton allowed three goals on seven shots on goal. Hamilton came into the contest having allowed just two goals on 43 total shots, with both goals coming in their only prior loss, a 2-1 overtime defeat to Gordon College.
Andrews put the Beacons on the board at 8:26, when she took a pass from Ledin at the top of the box, spun around a defender and sent a slow shot through Hamilton's legs for a 1-0 UMass Boston lead.
The Beacons doubled their lead in the 21st minute. Cristoforo simultaneously intercepted a Chargers pass and sent a through ball to Ledin, who beat one defender and shielded off a second Colby-Sawyer player, before sending a low shot into the side netting for a 2-0 lead.
UMass Boston dominated the rest of the half, earning a 7-2 shot advantage over the first half and a 4-1 edge in corner kicks.
Ledin effectively put the game out of reach less than two minutes into the second half, when she scored her team-leading 11th tally of the season. The junior forward drew a foul in the box and then proceeded to drive the ensuing penalty kick into the side netting for a 3-0 lead.
Colby-Sawyer picked up the pressure from there, but couldn't beat Spain, who was forced to make one terrific save on the afternoon.
The Chargers managed 10 shots in the second half, but still trailed the Beacons for the game 15-12 and 7-2 on shots on goals. UMass Boston also held a commanding 10-1 advantage in corner kicks on the afternoon.
With the win, UMass Boston improves to 2-0 all-time against Colby-Sawyer, after earning a 2-1 victory last season in New London, N.H.
UMass Boston will take to the road Saturday, when the Beacons travel to take on Eastern Connecticut State University at 3 p.m.


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York Theatre Company to Present MARDI GRAS and THE LAST WORD Operas, Beginning Feb 2
The York Theatre Company will present a developmental lab of two short operas, Mardi Gras and The Last Word both composed by Mildred Kayden. Directed by Bill Castellino and with music direction by Christopher McGovern, the 3-member company features Jason Mills, Rebecca Pitcher and Tom Souhrada. Performances are set for February 2 at 2:30pm & 8:00pm and February 3 at 2:30pm at The York Theatre Company in Saint Peter's (Entrance on East 54th Street, just east of Lexington Avenue).
These two short modern operas display the impressive musical range of composer Mildred Kayden- as well as her unique view of human relationships. Kayden is best known to NYC audiences as the composer of Ionescopade, successfully revived at the York Theatre last year.
Mardi Gras (last performed in NYC in 1959) combines the formality of opera, the beat of Dixieland Jazz and the style of Commedia Dell'arte. Commissioned by WNYC's Young Artist Series in 1958, it was suggested by Carl Carmer's verse play Pierrot Grows Up and is based upon a true story from the Mardi Gras of 1872. A Russian Grand Duke hears a Burlesque Queen sing and falls head over heels; the smitten Duke loses her to Joe, an American millionaire. The hilarious love triangle (with disguises, hiding places, duels, amorous looks, and lots of high notes beautifully sung) has a surprise ending and a delightful, tuneful score.
The Last Word, with libretto by the late poet James Broughton, premiered in Philadelphia in 1961 at the countrywide Synod of the United Church of Christ. As the recent date of the Mayan end-of-the-world recedes into history, this riveting duet exposes the complex feelings of a husband and wife moments before Armageddon. This piece approaches its subject matter with humor, irony and compassion; the work suggests that, for modern man, the idea of the apocalypse is most easily grasped with a touch of wit.
These two half-hour operas were first presented in tandem in West Hampton, NY in 1961. They present a combination of the witty and the existential which makes for a memorable theatrical journey.
All performances are free and open to the public. Reservations can be made online at www.yorktheatre.org.
Jason Mills is thrilled to be making his York debut. He played The Phantom in the national tour of The Phantom of the Opera and in the Broadway cast where he understudied both the Phantom and Raoul. Other credits include Forbidden Broadway: SVU (also cast recording); South Pacific (Carnegie Hall); Pardon My English and The New Moon (City Center Encores!); and the new musicals Lonely Rhymes, Illyria, and The Taxi Cabaret. Degree in biology from Harvard University.
Rebecca Pitcher best known for her portrayal of Christine Daae in the Andrew Lloyd-Webber production of the The Phantom of the Opera were she performed over 3000 performances including Broadway, the US National Tour, and Singapore. Other favorite roles include Grace Farrell in Annie, Christine Daee in the Yeston-Kopit version of The Phantom of the Opera, Johanna in Sweeney Todd, Rose in Street Scene, Louella Parsons in Saving Aimee, Rapunzel in Into the Woods, and The Queen of the Night in Mozarts The Magic Flute. Rebecca has also performed with the Pittsburgh Opera, Cleveland Opera, the Towson University Orchestra, and was a winner of the Columbus Opera competition.
Tom Souhrada is currently in the Broadway production of Mary Poppins. National Tours: Mary Poppins; Evita; My Fair Lady; The King & I; and The Boy Friend (directed by Julie Andrews). Off-Broadway: Broken Hands; Women on the Verge of Hrt; The Mystery of Irma Vep; Tony and Tina's Wedding. Regional: Cincinnati Playhouse, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Cleveland Playhouse, Great Lakes Theatre Fest, Sundance, Pioneer Theatre, Goodspeed, Ogunquit, Florida Rep, Seven Angels.
The York Theatre Company is the only theater in New York City-and one of very few in the world-dedicated to developing and fully producing new musicals and preserving neglected, notable shows from the past. For over four decades, York's intimate, imaginative style of producing both original and neglected classic musicals has resulted in critical acclaim and recognition from artists and audiences alike. Under the guidance of Producing Artistic Director James Morgan since 1997, the York has focused exclusively on new musicals in its Mainstage Series-most of them world, American, or New York premieres-by some of the field's most esteemed creators, and has also helped launch the careers of many talented new writers. Over 35 cast recordings from The York Theatre Company productions are now available on CD, and commercial transfers of such York premieres as The Musical of Musicals (The Musical!), Souvenir, Jolson & Company, and its acclaimed revivals of Closer Than Ever, Sweeney Todd and Pacific Overtures have all showcased the importance of the York and its programs.


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Americans are in the midst of Fourth of July celebrations, but the evening sky is overrated. Don't look there for awesome fireworks; look at these clips of video gaming's best fireworks. We've got to start with Mario.
Fantavision, the PlayStation 2's fireworks-gaming classic.
Final Fantasy XIII: Fireworks Edition
Boom Boom Rocket (Like DDR but with fireworks).
Uh.. Disney Fireworks, anyone?
Big Bang Mini, an obscure one on the Nintendo DS.
Left 4 Dead? This seems wrong.
Assassin's Creed II. Just the last bit of this clip.
Gran Turismo 5. Go figure.
Colonization (I love the name of this video: "Colonization Gameplay (SPOILER) - Video 18: INDEPENDENCE (End sequence)" ... it's like, spoiler: The British Empire loses!
Minecraft, of course.
Batman: Arkham Asylum. I forgot this game had any. Thanks Giant Bomb for your awesome fireworks-in-games list. I had to peek to remember this one.
Mini Ninjas. Fireworks-as-weapon!
Peggle. Well, Peggle hacked.
Animal Crossing.
This one isn't technically a video game, actually.


text:
Versatile buckets designed for moving topsoil, clay and other materials of lower density and lower abrasion.
General Duty buckets are designed for use in a variety of topsoils and clays with some amount of rock.
A full line of buckets is matched perfectly for the 6015B machine with buckets made for materials ranging from coal to heavy rock.
6015B buckets are fully supported by Cat with a variety of C70 hammerless GET options.
Cat General Duty buckets have our General Duty wear package with replaceable external wear bars available as a kit or individually.


text:
To us, a country ham is synonymous with family tradition. It's the flavor of dry cured, hickory smoked country ham, bacon and sausage that delivers a nostalgic sensation of southern family gatherings. Although a fire devastated our facility in January of 2016, we remain committed. Our fourth generation family business is sharing its expertise to carry on the delivery of quality cured meats, until we can continue this Virginia tradition in The Old Dominion once again. Read More..
If for ANY reason you feel your experience with our products are not up to your satisfaction, call us within 14 days of receipt and we will refund your money or replace your online / print catalog purchase.


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Jon Shafer's At the Gates
The Kickstarter campaign might be over, but you can still contribute to At the Gates on our website through PayPal!
It is the dark, brutal days of late antiquity. The Roman Empire is collapsing and the end of the world seems to be at hand. As civilization itself crumbles, you lead a fledgling barbarian kingdom which seeks to fill this vacuum of power and establish itself as the new master of Europe!
But it won't be easy. Ambitious rival kingdoms will stand in your way, and while the Romans may be weaker than they once were, they are still proud and formidable foes. However, external enemies are only one concern, and in these hard times even the land itself can be hostile...
If you contribute to our campaign to the $25 tier or above, you will receive a copy of At the Gates for Windows, Mac and Linux!
- February 25: At the Gates is coming to Mac, Linux and iOS! Not just that, but at $200k we'll develop an expansion pack where you'll be able to play as the Romans! And everyone who contributes at or above the $30 tier will receive it for free.
- February 19: We've received many questions about the strategy guide and designer notes, so we went ahead and added a new $30 tier where you can get them in digital form, in addition to the game!
- February 18: We just added a great new reward: you get a boxed copy of At the Gates autographed by the team, plus a manual/strategy guide!
- February 11: Can't use Kickstarter, but still want to contribute? Well, now with the help of the PayPal widget on our website, you can!
Hello! I'm Jon Shafer, founder of Conifer Games and lead designer of Civilization V. I'm very excited to share with you all my latest project: At the Gates, a historical turn-based strategy title for the PC.
At the Gates is an empire builder similar to Sid Meier's Civilization. Starting with a small tribe, you must explore the world, exploit its scarce resources, and eliminate or outsmart potential enemies. The game starts simple but grows in complexity until you command a mighty economic and military powerhouse.
Over the course of a single game your tribe will migrate to more lush and bountiful lands, conquer and barter with other clans, work alongside the Romans, learn from them, and finally destroy them. Along the way, you'll need to master the art of war and craft cunning plans to strengthen your kingdom - all while enduring the worst mother nature can throw at you!
1) A Longer Summary
2) Key Features
3) Current Status of At the Gates
4) Meet the Team
5) Want to Learn More?
6) Stretch Goals
7) Reward Tier Details
8) Risks and Challenges
At the Gates features several innovations which separate it from other empire builders.
A single playthrough of At the Gates becomes more interesting the deeper in you get, unlike many strategy titles which lose steam when victory becomes assured midway through. Over time, the world's resources are slowly but inevitably consumed, forcing you to seek out new sources of food and wealth if you hope to survive. The most satisfying victories are those which are hard-earned!
But the world is much more than simply a canvas for resources. At the Gates takes the traditional concept of randomized maps to a new level. As time passes so do the seasons, transforming the very landscape which surrounds you. Once-fertile grasslands become barren dirt. The waterways you've grown familiar with will freeze over, thwarting or aiding your travels. Accounting for the environment is essential not only when planning military campaigns, but also planning for the harvest necessary to feed your hungry clan.
At the Gates innovates on the diplomatic front as well. Relationships are cultivated by completing situational requests for other leaders, giving you the ability to dramatically reshape the political landscape. If Attila's people are starving, then providing him with a timely gift of food could very well earn you a friend for life. The tools for forging powerful alliances are always right at your fingertips.
While making friends is always nice, there will be times when discussions break down and you must take to the battlefield. Success in combat requires careful timing and management of supply, particularly during the harsh winter months. Starving an enemy into submission can be a powerful tactic - but first ensure your own troops are fed!
Click here to read a detailed description of the major features in At the Gates!
- Adapt to an ever-changing landscape as the seasons change. Craft plans where you not only survive but hope for fields to dry up, marshes to flood and rivers to freeze solid.
- Build a robust economy by finding and exploiting new resources. Deposits slowly deplete so you need to always be on the hunt for more - even if they belong to your neighbors. If none are nearby, a better option might be to migrate your entire tribe to a different part of the world!
- Vanquish enemies on the battlefield by deftly maneuvering around them and destroying their chains of supply. But make sure your own are protected, as tactical victory means nothing if your armies then starve to death!
- Forge lasting diplomatic relationships with other leaders by lending them a hand in times of need. If Attila's people are starving, sending him grain might earn you a friend for life.
- Fight or cooperate with the Romans - and become more like them. Barbarian kingdoms become more "Romanized" and gain access to powerful new technologies as they interact with the two halves of the Empire.
- Play on a geographically accurate map of Europe or 100% randomly-generated worlds.
- Lead one of eight factions, each with unique strengths to take advantage of and challenges to overcome.
At the Gates has a significant head start over many other projects that show up on Kickstarter. Our team already has a fully-playable prototype which includes a rough implementation of every major feature. Maps can be randomly generated, you can order your armies to crush enemies, basic diplomacy is possible and so on. We're very happy with the current state of the game!
So if that's the case, why am I asking for your money?
The short answer is that in spite of that progress, the road ahead is still a long one. While At the Gates is technically playable, the mechanics are still extremely rough. Iteration is the most vital element of game development, and the current version of At the Gates is just a first draft. The AI - essential for any single player strategy game - is still in its very early stages and will need significant development time and resources to provide the challenge strategy gamers expect.
The art style is solid, but there's a significant amount of polish work we'd still like to do. Portraits have been completed for only one out of the ten leaders. There's zero animation work done for either the units or the landscape. We have no sound effects, nor music outside of a single title theme.
So, yeah... our to-do list is pretty packed!
Conifer Games is a brand-new studio. We're not sitting on a massive pile of cash, we don't have a publisher and, as of right now, any future expenses will come directly out of the team's pocket. In other words, without your support At the Gates will never be finished.
$40,000 is not a large budget for a game with this kind of scope. But it's sufficient to finish At the Gates because we've already made significant progress, and have a very small development team. Raising more than that would let us add even more features to the game than we've talked about here, so we're certainly hoping to not just meet this threshold but shoot beyond it!
Our launch target for At the Gates is the first half of 2014.That date is obviously pretty far off, but we believe in setting realistic deadlines and being honest with you all about what to expect. A game like this can't be built in six months. Well, not a good one, anyways!
After At the Gates ships, Conifer will continue supporting it with patches and new content. And, should this Kickstarter be a success, once development on At the Gates ultimately winds down we'll begin work on other fresh, deep and ambitious titles. But let's not get ahead of ourselves now!
With your guys' support we can make all of that a reality. Come and be a part of an amazing game and a new company with a bright future. We promise we won't let you down!
Make sure you check out this feature on Polygon, which tells the in-depth story of At the Gates' development and the team behind it!
Conifer Games is a new development studio based out of Michigan. It's made up of a core of three developers aided by a handful of part-time contractors.
So what are we all about?
Our team is committed to delivering deep, satisfying gaming experiences on the PC platform. We firmly believe that incredible opportunities still remain hidden within the strategy genre, and our journey to prove that begins with At the Gates!
You might be wondering where the name "Conifer Games" came from. Our team is comprised of a group of nature-lovers. We all live in a house together in a small patch of woods. We also wanted a name that highlights our goals as a company - starting small, but eventually growing into something amazing. We believe that At the Gates is just the beginning of an amazing journey - not just for us but also for those who will play our games!
I (Jon!) am the president and founder of Conifer Games. I also serve as designer and gameplay programmer for At the Gates. You might know me as the lead designer for Civilization V.
Prior to founding Conifer, I worked for Firaxis Games and Stardock Entertainment. I've been in this business for a total of 8 years now and have six titles under my belt. I also write game design articles on my website and co-host The Game Design Round Table podcast.
I originally hail from Colorado and am a huge history buff, a baseball fanatic and enjoy the finest games that the strategy and RPG genres have to offer. I've been making games since I was 9 years old and I still have to pinch myself to make sure that I am in fact lucky enough to be doing this for a living!
Kay is the art director for At the Gates. She is a Michigan native and has been making art since she could hold a pencil. In her free time she not only reads graphic novels but also creates them.
Kay has also been a fan of computer games from an early age. I asked her what her favorite game was, but she said she's played too many to pick. So, yeah... If this whole games thing doesn't work out my future probably won't be in investigative journalism!
Kay's other hobbies include learning about science and nature. She's an avid fan of documentaries, and has seen hundreds relating to these subjects. Ask her to explain string theory sometime, I dare you.
Kay also owns over fifty plants and several pets, including a dozen crested geckos, a sugar glider, a parrotlet and a domesticated Siberian fox named Anya. Actually, scratch that. Two parrotlets now.
As art director, Kay's goal is to ensure At the Gates features a fresh, clean style that's immediately recognizable and doesn't get in the way of the game. She's very much rooting for the success of this campaign, as the funding will allow the team to flesh out much more of the game's art. And let me tell you, she's more than a little tired of me grabbing stuff from Google Images and plugging them into the game!
Jonathan is the architect for At the Gates. He brings 10 years of professional programming experience to the table, and is a lifelong gamer to boot.
As part of working on At the Gates, Jonathan is writing ElfTools, an extensive game development toolset for C#. He plans on releasing this library for free to the public once development on it is sufficiently advanced. Jonathan hopes this will help smooth over the many gaps in existing technology and open up new doors for current and would-be game developers.
Jonathan was also born and raised in Michigan and is a lover of all things elven - hence, ElfTools. He spends much of his free time playing League of Legends, working on a variety of programming hobby projects and raising the bar on fiction through his writing.
Jonathan is also very excited for the anticipated release of At the Gates, which will be his first credit on a game title as a professional. Woohooo!
If simply reading about At the Gates hasn't yet whetted your appetite, make sure to check out our first gameplay video. It's 15 minutes long and provides a good sense for what a game of At the Gates is like. We're still only in the prototype stage, so please forgive the lack of polish!
You can also listen to our awesome theme music in full:
Additionally, whether you're a backer or not, you can continue following the development of At the Gates over the coming months either right here or over at my website. Throughout February and into early March a new article will be posted every couple of days further detailing the features in At the Gates, plus the story behind its development.
Stop on by - we can't wait to tell you more!
Thanks for your generous support everyone! Needless to the say, the first week of this campaign have blown well past what we were hoping for.
Our first set of stretch goals is focused on modding, which as many of you know is something near and dear to my heart. We know that some folks have no interest in making or playing mods though, so we're also including a goal to expand the number of playable factions from 8 to 10!
And for those of you who have been wondering about the game being available on other platforms, this is something Jonathan and I are looking into now. Mono looks to be fairly promising so far. We'll let you know what we find out!
- Jon
✔ $50,000 - XML Mod Support
Through XML you'll be able to add or modify units, terrain types, etc. Values in code used to determine the game rules will also be exposed and modifiable.
✔ $60,000 - Map Editor
The team will create and release an editor with which you'll be able to build entirely-custom maps.
✔ $70,000 - DLL Mod Support
You'll be given the source code for the interface, AI and map generation, allowing for full customization of these systems. This will make it possible to mod At the Gates into virtually any language!
✔ $85,000 - Two New Playable Factions
At the Gates will feature 10 playable factions instead of just 8.
$125,000 - New Map Options
It will be possible to adjust the percent of land or water, the shapes of the landmasses, the quantity and density of resource deposits, and more.
This stretch goal will also mean we include a map of the earth to go along with the map of Europe we're already planning on delivering.
$200,000 - Playable Romans Expansion Pack
Our team will develop an expansion pack for At the Gates where the Roman factions are playable. Many of the core mechanics will remain similar, but we'll be re-tooling the game experience specifically for the declining, non-nomadic empire.
As the Romans, your focus is very much on using your diplomatic might to try and manipulate the barbarian tribes which surround you. There will also be a replacement for the Romanization system that allows you to obtain goodies more technologically advanced than the barbarians could dream of!
Should this stretch goal be hit, everyone who contributes at the $30 tier or above will receive this expansion for free.
Boxed Version
The box will be approximately 7.5 inches tall, 5.5 inches wide, and 1 inch thick. It will contain:
- A printed manual/strategy guide. We have no idea how long this will be since, well, it hasn't been written yet! But you can expect something over 100 pages. As suggested, it will be more than just, "this is how you install the game!" and also offer gameplay tips, delve into possible strategies, and include design notes explaining the team's intentions behind the features being described. It should be pretty cool!
- Autographs from each member of the core development team (Jon, Kay and Jonathan).
- A CD or DVD of the game that contains all versions of At the Gates, stored in a paper sleeve.
Naming In-Game Items
All of the reward tiers which allow contributors to name or set the direction for an in-game item are subject to approval by Conifer - after all, we have to make sure whatever you choose is actually appropriate for the game! As an example, let's say Jonathan likes Elves and wants to name a city "Elftown." This city name doesn't really match the theme, but if we Romanized it into "Elfinium," then it would be. We will work with you to help come up with an appropriate name if necessary.
If you're curious what it means to "add a name to the random map generator," this is how it works:
In randomly-generated maps, certain geographic features will be given names that are visible in the game. If your contribution reaches the appropriate tier, your names will be added to the pool of names that the map generator picks from. Your names will be distributed with all copies of the game so that anytime someone generates a random At the Gates map, your names will have a chance to be displayed!
Risks and challenges
As noted above, the prototype version of 'At the Gates' already serves as a solid foundation, so we're not going into this thing with just a piece of paper or an idea. Assuming this campaign is funded, it would basically take a global extinction event to stop this game from coming out! That being said, every project has potential hiccups.
As a small team, we don't have a huge quality assurance department. The plan is to have a large beta test group that will help us weed out issues, but that will never be a replacement for a large professional staff.
Our team will remain dedicated to the game post-release and put in whatever time necessary to improve it. We know you have high standards, and we wouldn't be making this type of game if we didn't have similarly high standards for ourselves.
We live in an era of big-budget games that show up on the cover of every magazine, are advertised on TV and have uber-realistic graphics that serve as the source for thousands of fan art creations. But all of this costs time and money - a lot of it.
With 'At the Gates,' our team is placing its bets on gameplay instead. Conifer Games is dedicated to creating experiences that are deep and strategic. Our budget for audio and graphics may not be that of today's AAA releases but our visual style will be suited for the game and genre we're working on. We hope that this is a tradeoff that most of you will not just accept, but appreciate!
'At the Gates' isn't going to be made in a black box, where you only find out what you're getting into on release day. The team will be posting regular updates detailing progress on how the game is coming along. Once we're close to release a demo will be made available so that everyone can give it a shot and see what they think.
The 'At the Gates' development crew isn't a large bunch, and there are inherent risks with that. But we're all very dedicated and want to see 'At the Gates' succeed.
This is an amazing opportunity for us, and we want nothing more than to show that deep PC games can be developed by only a few people. We have a lot of other great ideas we'd love to work on as well, and if you're willing to have some faith in us we'll make sure you don't regret it!Learn about accountability on Kickstarter
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Inspired by T Rex, the hippy zeitgeist of the 1970s and the fantasy illustration style that went with it, Alan Baker has some amazing stories to tell. Once, he hitchhiked across Europe with just £35 in his pocket and ended up in Afghanistan. He's also known to bury dishwashers and washing machines in his garden. These are true stories, but when it comes to fantasy illustration he has an imagination that's second to none. His awards cabinet is full of honours to prove it.
When studying zoology didn't pan out for Alan – he found himself drawing instead – he switched to illustration, and took a degree at what is now the University of Brighton. He graduated in 1976 and has been an illustrator ever since.
Some of Alan's earliest memories involve colour, and how different shades react to the lighting conditions. Today, he works up his compositions on screen using Photoshop, then hand paints the various elements of the image, layering them together digitally at the end of the process.
Though his subject matter is often fantastical, there's a canny realism and high level of detail in Alan's work. Skin, hair, fur and feathers are all deftly recreated whether they belong to a dragon or a dormouse.
Whitbread Award 1979
Benson & Hedges Illustration Awards Gold 1984
Creative Circle Awards 1990 Gold and Silver in Press Advertising
YES Award of Excellence 1992
Children's Choices Award 1995
Children's Choices Award 1996
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Police Department
Lincoln Man Arrested for Assisting Suicide
On September 16, 2009, at 11:20 am, Dallas Huston called Lincoln Police to report that his roommate, 22 year old Ryan Johnson, had committed suicide. Dallas Huston reported he found Ryan Johnson with his head wrapped with plastic wrap. Subsequent autopsy confirmed that Ryan died from asphyxiation. Evidence at the scene and toxicology reports indicated that Ryan also consumed sleeping pills prior to his death.
During the investigation, Lincoln Police discovered that Dallas Huston discussed the death with other individuals. Those acquaintances came forward with information that Dallas Huston helped Ryan Johnson to commit suicide. Investigators were able to confirm the information through recorded interviews.
On October 7, 2009, Dallas Huston was arrested for Assisting Suicide [28-307], a Class IV Felony. At this point, the investigation is still on-going. We have no information to indicate that anybody but Ryan Johnson and Dallas Huston were present at the time of the victim's death. No additional arrests are expected.


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Nov. 1, 2012
Cool, Crisp Camping Weather Major Texas State Parks Draw
AUSTIN – With summer vacations a distant memory, cooler temperatures on the horizon and foliage morphing into dazzling shades of crimson and gold, autumn promises optimum camping conditions in a Texas State Park near you.
Whether you're a novice to the outdoors or seasoned camper, there's no better time of year to pitch a tent or park your camper on a sunny beach, beneath towering pines or overlooking a sparkling lake at such destinations as Galveston Island, Buescher and Possum Kingdom state parks.
"Fall's a perfect time to camp out because of cooler evenings, but daytime temperatures typically remain warm enough to enjoy water-based activities like canoeing and fishing," says Ky Harkey, Texas State Parks outdoor education team leader.
Harkey recommends campers focus on three priorities: safety, Leave No Trace camping practices and simply having fun. He says for visitor safety and the protection of the environment, set up camp only in designated camping sites. Campfires are great for enjoying quality family time, but to keep the forest healthy avoid collecting firewood. Don't forget the marshmallows and playing cards to complete a perfect evening.
For those who have never camped or haven't done so in many years, Harkey suggests participating in the Texas Outdoor Family program. For only $65, families up to six can try a two-day workshop held at state parks throughout Texas that focus on teaching families how to set up a tent, cooking in the outdoors and learning valuable outdoor skills, such as paddling, geocaching and fishing.
Dallas and Fort Worth area families may want to attend a Texas Outdoor Family outing being held at Cedar Hill State Park on Nov. 10 or at Mineral Wells State Park on Dec. 8. Not far from Houston, Stephen F. Austin State Park in San Felipe will host a Texas Outdoor Family campout on Nov. 17. For Austin and San Antonio families, Harkey's team will offer two workshops at Enchanted Rock State Natural Area near Fredericksburg on Dec. 1 and 8.
For a complete listing of upcoming Texas Outdoor Family workshops and information about Texas State Parks camping options, and tips on camping safety and etiquette, visit: http://www.texasstateparks.org/camping/.
Customers can book reservations by calling the Customer Service Center in Austin at (512) 389-8900 or by using the online reservation system: http://texas.reserveworld.com/. For the best service, customers should call during afternoon hours Wednesday through Friday, though customer service representatives can take reservations from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday.
For downloadable news images of Texas State Park camping, visit: http://tpwd.texas.gov/newsmedia/news_images/?g=oam_camping
For a video on how to get started camping in Texas State Parks, visit: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAlzOrxCUcU]
For B-roll video of families enjoying a campout in Texas State Parks, visit: http://tpwd.texas.gov/files/video/Camping%20BROLL%202.mov.zip
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Surface Mount Directional Lighting
Boise, Idaho, August 2012 – ECCO's 9014 Series Hide-A-LED™ is a high intensity LED warning light specifically designed for vehicle headlight and tail light applications. In addition, the 9014 can also be surface mounted to the vehicle exterior using the included mounting bezel and features six LEDs that provide exceptional warning. A sealed in-line driver module eliminates the need for a remote power supply. The 9014 has multiple flash patterns and synchronization capability with other Hide-A-LEDs™ and ECCO's 3510. Additional benefits of LED technology include low current draw and a long maintenance-free service life.
For additional information or details of a local distributor contact ECCO Customer Service at 800.635.5900 or visit www.eccolink.com.


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Marlins' top two live up to their billing
Huge years from Yelich, Fernandez headline club's All-Stars
By Jonathan Raymond / Special to MLB.com | November 7, 2012 6:00 AM
It was a big year for Marlins prospects, particularly the top two.
The top of the crop -- Christian Yelich and Jose Fernandez -- also had the best seasons in the organization, winning the Marlins' organizational Player and Pitcher of the Year awards respectively while turning in two of the biggest breakout seasons in the Minor Leagues.
Along with Marcell Ozuna and Adam Conley, four of MLB.com's top six Miami prospects warranted inclusion as Organization All-Stars. The group also features a healthy mix of veterans who, in the words of Marlins director of player development Brian Chattin, "anchored" Triple-A New Orleans.
But it was the potential-filled young players like Yelich and Fernandez who stormed through the lower levels and paved the way for both Class A Greensboro and Class A Advanced Jupiter to advance to their league championships.
Marlins Organization All-Stars
Catcher -- Luke Montz, New Orleans (123 games): The veteran catcher slugged his way onto this team, bashing an organization-best 29 home runs (second-most in the Pacific Coast League), 14 doubles and 74 RBIs for the Zephyrs. The 29-year-old Louisiana native slugged .495 in his first year at Triple-A, getting on base at a .310 clip while hitting .222. It marked his second straight selection as an Organization All-Star for Miami.
First baseman -- Matt Smith, Greensboro (90 games): The 24-year-old out took the less-traveled route to his selection. He went undrafted after his senior season at the University of Mississippi in 2010 and then missed all of 2011 due to Tommy John surgery before Miami signed him this offseason. He responded by slugging .506, clubbing 20 home runs (second most in the South Atlantic League) and 15 doubles in his first taste of professional baseball. He also hit .279 and posted a .358 OBP and was named a Sally League midseason All-Star.
"We didn't know much about Matt -- we signed him in the offseason, so Spring Training was the first look we had at him," said Chattin. "We finally got him healthy, got him on the field ready to go, and he really provided a nice offensive spark to [Greensboro]. He has tremendous raw power to all fields, and I think there's more in there as we get the lower half of his swing more consistent. He's a prototypical right-handed power-hitting corner infielder."
Second baseman -- Austin Barnes, Greensboro (123 games): Barnes, drafted as a catcher in the ninth round in 2011 out of Arizona State University by Miami, might well have a Craig Biggio kind of career path in front of him. After playing mostly behind the dish during his 2011 debut with Class A Short-Season Jamestown, Barnes played 104 games at second this year. The 22-year-old hit .318/.401/.481 for Greensboro, adding 12 home runs, 36 doubles and 65 RBIs and walked almost as many times (59) as he struck out (61). He was both a midseason and postseason Sally League All-Star.
"Austin played second and had a tremendous year," said Chattin. "'Baseball player' is the best way to describe him. He does the little things well, knows the game very well -- the ins and outs of it. He comes to play every single day, gives you professional at-bats, gets on base. He's a real table-setter and, he's a guy that has defensive versatility."
Shortstop -- Danny Black, Jupiter (78 games), Jacksonville (eight games): Black is another Marlins farmhand earning his second straight Organization All-Star nod. A 14th-rounder in 2010, he hit a career-best .309 this season, getting on base at a .369 clip and stealing 19 bases. The University of Oklahoma product hit .314 in the Florida State League, which would have been good for third on the circuit had he qualified. He was also named an FSL postseason All-Star.
"Danny Black is an above-average athlete, a left-handed hitter who runs well, will steal you a base on occasion. He's a top-of-the-order-type player," Chattin noted. "He's a steady defender, has some unorthodox aspects to his game, but he's very productive. I think that as he moves up the ladder he could do a lot of different things for the club with his athleticism and versatility. I've seen him take fly balls in center field, and I think he could play it if he wanted to try that as he continues along."
Third baseman -- Mike Cervenak, New Orleans (101 games): The 36-year-old veteran of 14 Minor League seasons was reliable once again for the Zephyrs this year. His .340 average led the organization and was good for fifth in the PCL. He posted a .408 OBP and .504 slugging percentage as well, with 13 homers and 57 RBIs.
"He was a veteran anchor of that Triple-A club," said Chattin. "He missed the first month of the season, but when he got to New Orleans in May, he hit the ground running and really put together a fine offensive year. He's a gap-to-gap hitter, a professional in every at-bat. Very dependable, the kind of person any organization would want to have on a club, and for me, a fella that, once his playing career is done, would make a heck of a coach or manager if he wanted to pursue that."
Christian Yelich, GCL Marlins (one game), Jupiter (106 games): The Marlins' top prospect built on a strong 2011 with an even better 2012. He batted .330 for Jupiter -- second-best in the FSL (and third in the organization) -- with a .404 OBP and a .516 slugging percentage, all career highs. The 23rd overall pick in the 2010 Draft added 12 home runs and 29 doubles to earn a second consecutive spot on the Organization All-Star list, was both a midseason and postseason FSL All-Star, played in the Futures Game and was named the Marlins' Minor League Player of the Year. He is MLB.com's No. 17 overall prospect.
"Christian had a tremendous year, both offensively and defensively," Chattin said. "He missed some time due to a couple injuries, but the numbers speak for themselves. He's what you look for in a player -- intelligent, athletic. He's a pure hitter who, I think as he continues to mature, is going to show improved power production. He is a tremendous individual, mature beyond his years and a very competitive person who wants to win. It's a team-first mentality that comes from him."
Marcell Ozuna, Jupiter (129 games): Ozuna, Miami's No. 5 prospect, provided a third straight big year in terms of power production for the Marlins. With the Hammerheads, the Dominican Republic native slugged .476, hit 24 home runs and drove in an organization-topping 95 runs. The 21-year-old also led the FSL in RBIs and was a midseason and postseason All-Star for the circuit. He was an Organization All-Star last year as well.
"He's a five-tool player, an exciting individual to watch. He can do about anything he wants on the field -- tremendous power, runs well, has an above-average arm that suits him well in right field and he has range. He's got a developing offensive approach, and I think as he continues to get at-bats, see advanced pitching, see breaking balls, his strike zone awareness will improve and his production will continue to increase," said Chattin.
Brent Keys, Greensboro (95 games): Keys had something of a breakout year for the Grasshoppers, putting together a .335 average that was tops in both the Miami organization and in the South Atlantic League. He got on base at a .394 clip and slugged .449, knocking five homers and 21 doubles en route to selections to the Sally League midseason and postseason All-Star squads. He also swiped 18 bases, tied for fourth-most among Marlins farmhands.
"He was a pleasant surprise this year. He's battled some injuries throughout his career but got some playing time, settled in as our center fielder at Greensboro and had a tremendous offensive year," noted Chattin. "He has a speed element to his game, uses it well. He can put a bunt down, doesn't do too much with his swing, can go gap to gap. Instinctive outfielder with great range in center field."
Utility -- Gil Velazquez, New Orleans (110 games), Miami (19 games): Velazquez toiled mostly at second and shortstop for the Zephyrs and then played exclusively at third during a 19-game callup with the Marlins, showing versatility around the infield. He hit .312 and registered a .391 OBP in Triple-A, driving in 42 runs on 20 extra-base hits before hitting .232 during his stint in Miami. The 33-year-old was also an Organization All-Star for the Angels last season.
"Gil is a true professional, a veteran player that knows how to play. He provides defensive versatility and a consistent offensive approach," said Chattin. "He played third when he got to the bigs and held his own pretty well there, even though he hadn't played it. That's who Gil is -- someone who is very reliable, very consistent."
Right-handed pitcher -- Jose Fernandez, Greensboro (14 games), Jupiter (11 games): Fernandez, a 20-year-old out of Cuba, was perhaps the biggest breakout star in all the Minor Leagues this season. The 14th overall pick in 2011 began his year in Class A, where he went 7-0 for Greensboro with a 1.59 ERA before a promotion to Class A Advanced. He was just as dominant at his new level, going 7-1 with a 1.96 ERA for Jupiter. In total, he recorded a 1.75 ERA in 134 innings this year, striking out 158 and walking 35. His ERA was seventh-lowest throughout the Minors and his strikeout total was good for 13th. The Marlins' No. 2 prospect and MLB.com's No. 22 overall also pitched in the Futures Game.
"That's as good a year as you could ask for from a starting pitcher," Chattin said. "He pitched at two levels and dominated them both. What the numbers don't tell you is what kind of competitor he is. He's extremely committed, not to becoming a Major Leaguer, but being the best Major Leaguer he can be. ... You can see he's advanced when it comes to his ability to pitch and dominate lineups. His stuff is well above average, but he also has the ability to throw strikes, which is sometimes not the case with a young arm that has power to it."
Fernandez was also selected as Starting Pitcher of the Year in the entire Minor Leagues by MiLB.com's staff.
Left-handed pitcher -- Adam Conley, Greensboro (14 games), Jupiter (12 games): Conley, a second-rounder in 2011, finished third in the organization in wins (11), fourth in strikeouts (135) and sixth in ERA (3.47). The 22-year-old was strongest for the Grasshoppers, going 7-3 with a 2.78 ERA while striking out 84 in 74 1/3 innings before a promotion to the FSL. Overall, he wound up striking out 135 while walking just 43 in 127 innings.
"He's a very mature, polished left-handed pitcher. He needs to develop his slider -- he worked on it throughout the year -- and I think once he gets it in place, he has a chance to move quick and be a productive member of a Major League rotation," noted Chattin.
Reliever -- A.J. Ramos, Jacksonville (55 games): The 26-year-old was lights-out in Double-A, recording a 1.44 ERA in 68 2/3 innings while striking out 89 and walking 21 for the Suns. His 21 saves were second-most in the organization and in the Southern League. He was a Miami Organization All-Star in 2011 and a Southern League midseason All-Star this year. He earned a callup in September to the big leagues, where he posted a 3.86 ERA with 13 strikeouts and four walks in 9 1/3 frames for the Marlins.
"He's a bulldog, very competitive and has the closer mentality," said Chattin. "He was a late-round pick -- a 21st-rounder -- and he has proved himself every step of the way. He has above-average stuff and above-average mentality and work ethic, and that combined is going to, in my opinion, make him very successful."
Jonathan Raymond is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues or its clubs.View More


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Let me guess, you have been playing NewsDay crossword and got stuck on the clue Shape of an egg. Well, you have come to the right place to find the answer to this clue.
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|NewsDay crossword of April 17th, 2018 other clues
|''Not guilty,'' for one
|Hoarse-sounding voice
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|__ Grey tea
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|Astronauts' org.
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|Immediately, in a memo
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|__-esteem (ego)
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|Low choral voice
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|Fearsome dinosaur, for short
|What police forces enforce
|''That makes sense''
|Object of adoration
|Sail the seven __
|Rabbit's relative
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