With advantages in its mild climate, fertile soil, diverse ecosystem, and early access to advanced science and technology, Lam Dong has long been regarded as the country’s “capital” of high-tech agriculture. On that foundation, the province continues to identify high-tech and smart agriculture as a breakthrough, gradually shaping a modern and efficient agricultural sector with strong competitiveness in international markets.

A foundation for a new phase of development

Lam Dong currently has more than 107,000 hectares of high-tech agricultural production, accounting for 11% of its cultivated area, 1,200 hectares of which are smart agriculture. The province has 16 high-tech agricultural production zones covering more than 16,000 hectares as well as seven high-tech agricultural enterprises operating effectively.

The province has nearly 150,000 hectares of agricultural production meeting safety and sustainability standards such as VietGAP, GlobalGAP, and organic standards; 952 export planting area codes covering more than 39,000 hectares and 341 packing facilities meeting international standards; and 416 linkage chains, more than 1,150 cooperatives, and 914 OCOP products.

Lam Dong’s agricultural products have entered major markets including China, the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the EU, and Australia. The locality has a number of key agricultural products produced on a large scale, such as vegetables (about 101,000 hectares, with output reaching 3.5 million tonnes per year), flowers (nearly 12,000 hectares, accounting for about 30% of the country’s flower production area, with output of 4.8 billion stems per year and export turnover exceeding 70 million USD), coffee, durian, avocado, pepper, macadamia, and dragon fruit.

Lam Dong’s agricultural products have entered major markets including China, the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the EU, and Australia. The locality has a number of key agricultural products produced on a large scale, such as vegetables (about 101,000 hectares, with output reaching 3.5 million tonnes per year), flowers (nearly 12,000 hectares, accounting for about 30% of the country’s flower production area, with output of 4.8 billion stems per year and export turnover exceeding 70 million USD), coffee, durian, avocado, pepper, macadamia, and dragon fruit.

The average agricultural production value reaches 197 million VND per hectare per year, while high-tech agriculture exceeds 450 million VND per hectare, vegetables generate between 500 million and 1 billion VND per hectare, and flowers reach 5 billion VND per hectare.

According to Assoc Prof, Dr Nguyen Dinh Tho from the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Agriculture and Environment, Lam Dong has outstanding advantages in natural conditions and has formed agricultural production zones, helping its key products establish strong brands in international markets. The development of biotechnology is also a key highlight.

Each year, tissue culture facilities in Lam Dong supply more than 50 million seedlings, more than 35 million of which are exported, generating revenue of around 10 million USD. “Lam Dong’s biotechnology sector is ranked among the leading in Southeast Asia by international partners,” said Ho Anh Dung, Director of F1 Biotechnology Co., Ltd.

In Lam Dong, many modern production models have demonstrated effectiveness in recent years. A notable example is Langbiang Farm, which operates a closed production ecosystem on nearly 30 hectares in line with VietGAP and GlobalGAP standards, with strong application of Internet of Things (IoT), environmental sensors, and QR code-based traceability. Each year, the enterprise exports more than 100 containers of agricultural products to Asian markets.

Founder of Langbiang Farm Tran Huy Duong affirmed: “Digitalisation is now the trend. Only genuine innovation and real value can lead to success.” Vu Dinh Cuong, Deputy Director of the Lam Dong Department of Agriculture and Environment, emphasised: “The success of Lam Dong’s agriculture comes from utilising the right approach: taking enterprises as the core, science and technology as the foundation, and farmers as the centre, thereby strongly promoting the transition from traditional to modern production.”

Towards green agriculture

Lam Dong’s agricultural export turnover remains above 1.2 billion USD per year, accounting for more than 40% of the province’s total export value. Building on this foundation, the Resolution of the Lam Dong Provincial Party Congress for the 2025–2030 term identifies the development of modern, ecological, high-tech agriculture, alongside the building of agricultural value chains linked with e-commerce, to fully tap into and promote local potential and advantages.

Ho Van Muoi, Party Central Committee member and Chairman of the Lam Dong People’s Committee, stressed that agriculture is a “pillar” of the local economy, with high-tech agriculture identified as a strategic direction towards building a modern, green, and sustainable agricultural sector. Based on this orientation, Lam Dong is strongly shifting towards an agricultural economy mindset, focusing on added value, branding, and markets; developing logistics and services in key agricultural areas; integrating e-commerce; and forming concentrated production zones linked with deep processing.

In the 2026–2030 period, the province aims to raise the proportion of processed agricultural products to 70%. By 2030, the area of high-tech agriculture is expected to exceed 150,000 hectares, with an average production value of more than 250 million VND per hectare per year.

“The agricultural sector is working to complete a digital data system serving management, forecasting, and product traceability. It is also building development strategies for key products such as vegetables, flowers, specialty coffee, fruit trees, and high-quality seafood,” said Vu Dinh Cuong.

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/37313

In the fall of 2004, Diane Miller, a tree-fruit specialist, began a two-part expedition on a Fulbright to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, in Central Asia, the birthplace of the apple. Her quest: to bring back seeds from the region’s wild apple trees that could infuse domestic breeding programs with biodiversity.

The American apple industry is concentrated almost entirely on a handful of varieties. Just 15 apples account for roughly 90 percent of the market. In contrast, Central Asia’s thousands of wild apple varieties offered untold diversity from trees that had borne fruit across centuries of cultivation.

On the second half of the expedition in 2005, Miller, accompanied by her teenage daughter, Amy, journeyed through dramatic Kyrgyz landscapes. The pair traversed alpine passes and arid valleys on the way to a mountainous area in the west that was blanketed by apple and walnut forests. They were awed by the breathtaking abundance.

There was something else, too: The steep, wooded slopes and sandstone bluffs, surrounded by a wash of dense greenery, reminded them of their home in Appalachian Ohio.

“If I squinted a little bit, I could have thought I was at home,” said Amy Miller, now a fruit grower and plant pathologist. “That was our first indicator that these trees might be well adapted to our region.”

“It can be the foundation to a future of apple growing that ensures clean water and biodiversity and the health of farmworkers.”

The Millers returned to Ohio with hundreds of seeds from trees whose longevity suggested they might carry disease resistance—a trait that could be bred into American varieties, potentially reducing domestic reliance on chemical sprays.

In spring 2007, they planted seedlings in a research plot at Dawes Arboretum, a 2,000-acre preserve in an agricultural community east of Columbus, Ohio. The seedlings became part of a much larger collection, spanning roughly 6,000 trees and 15 acres, including controlled crosses of domestic varieties and selections from previous U.S. Department of Agriculture collection trips to Kazakhstan.

At Dawes, the Kyrgyz apples thrived. For nearly two decades they’ve lived there, some 800 trees growing into a unique repository of wild apple genetics that many breeders and growers now view as critical for the future of the domestic apple industry. Apple growers face a host of challenges, including global competition, climate change, rising costs, and many more.

“It can be the foundation to a future of apple growing that ensures clean water and biodiversity . . . and the health of farmworkers,” said Eliza Greenman, a germplasm specialist at the agroforestry nonprofit Savanna Institute. “It’s a foundation to unlocking apple flavors, too—to extending the boundaries of what we think apples can taste like.”

That future, however, is now uncertain. In mid-December 2025, Dawes’ executive director, Stephanie Crockatt, sent Miller a letter asking for the trees to be removed by the end of March.

“We have made the decision to adjust our research priorities and land management strategies,” the letter stated.

The directive left only enough time for “triage,” Greenman said. More than 100 plant breeders, researchers, fruit growers, agroforesters, and nonprofits signed a letter, written by Greenman, that pleaded for an extension so the collection “can be used, studied, and evaluated for years to come.”

Dawes pushed its deadline out a year to March 2027. Even with the extension, Greenman said, the decision risks dismantling an unrivaled resource for apple breeders that could take decades to reassemble.

Diane Miller surveys the wild Kyrgyz apple collection at Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio. (Photo credit: Amy Miller)

Resilience Through Diversity

Diane Miller’s work is organized around a simple idea, she said: “genetic diversity for environmental resilience.” Through her work at Ohio State, the Midwest Apple Improvement Association, and the Midwest Apple Foundation, she’s long championed plant breeding that can increase disease resistance and reduce reliance on fungicides and insecticides.

Domestic apples are susceptible to pests like the codling moth and diseases like apple scab, a fungus that blemishes the fruit’s skin, and fireblight, a destructive bacteria that can rapidly kill trees. Because of these vulnerabilities, apples are sprayed with pesticides intensively, often weekly.

The domestic apple industry has veered toward a high-risk, high-reward model, Greenman said, accepting the added frustration and increased costs—in both sprays and systems—of working with delicate but delicious apples like Honeycrisp because the price they fetch can be three times that of sturdier alternatives.

In Kyrgyzstan, where the Millers gathered their genetic material, apples have been cultivated for centuries but never domesticated in isolation like American apples. In that wild setting, the trees remain largely unbothered by pests and disease. For the Millers, that made them invaluable for breeding programs that could cross their hardy traits with the intense sweetness and trademark crunch consumers crave from the Honeycrisp and numerous varieties it’s inspired.

“The future of the apple industry needs more disease resistance built in,” Greenman said, “or else breeding will be replaced by creating chemicals.”

“The future of the apple industry needs more disease resistance built in or else breeding will be replaced by creating chemicals.”

With American apple growers concentrated on a small range of varieties, “there’s a real risk of a genetic bottleneck,” said Matthew Moser Miller, an Ohio orchardist and cider maker who is familiar with the Dawes collection (and who is unrelated to Diane and Amy Miller).

A limited genetic pool can weaken disease resistance, making trees more vulnerable over time, he said. The Kyrgyz trees at the arboretum offer a safeguard—an immense variety of flavors and the promise of greater crop resilience.

As the seedlings grew into a forest of mature, 20-foot-tall trees, Diane Miller selected the best candidates for breeding, propagating them by grafting cuttings, called scionwood, onto rootstock and letting them grow. To cross two varieties, she applied pollen from the flowers of one to the flowers of the other.

Miller worked at this for years, promoting desirable qualities through generations of breeding while maintaining a library of traits breeders could use into the future. The Kyrgyz trees “have inherent vigor that is lacking in domestic apples,” she said. They also boast unusually high quantities of phenols, the chemical compounds that give fruits their antioxidant and anti-inflammatory power.

But plant breeding is a long-term process that will be interrupted by the forced exit from the arboretum. Moving the entire collection would be impossible, and moving just a selection wouldn’t capture its diversity. Miller will spend the next year collecting scionwood to propagate clones from the planting, but she will lose mature trees whose age is an integral part of understanding their potential.

“It takes time to sort and sift all that out,” Miller said. “They don’t just jump out and say, ‘I’ve got multi-gene disease resistance. Take me.’”

An apple tree bred with wild Kyrgyz genetics from the Dawes Arboretum collection. With its disease resistance and large fruit, it’s a prime candidate for breeding with existing commercial varieties to produce a crisp, delicious, yet resilient apple. (Photo credit: Diane Miller)

Rebuilding a Repository

Despite the protests of the apple breeding community, Crockatt, who took over as Dawes’ executive director in November 2024, says genetic research and crop production no longer align with the arboretum’s priorities.

Although Dawes hosts other research collections, including for maple, buckeye, and witch hazel, those are governed by formal research agreements outlining responsibilities and expectations. The Kyrgyz apple collection hasn’t met those guidelines, Crockatt said.

“It really is a situation where we have been a host, not a partner,” Crockatt said.

The relationship between Dawes and the nonprofit Midwest Apple Foundation, whose members have tended and monitored the entire 15-acre collection since its planting, developed out of a handshake agreement between leaders who are no longer at their respective institutions, Amy Miller said.

The foundation tried to formalize an agreement with Dawes in 2024, while the arboretum was under interim leadership; its intention was to rehabilitate the full planting, replacing trees whose evaluation was completed with new seedlings to observe. With a funding plan in place and apparent support from Dawes, the Millers were optimistic about their proposal. But the next time they heard from the arboretum was the December letter, sparking frustration and a rush to find a new home for the plant material.

“The new leadership team didn’t show any interest in actually learning what we have there,” Amy Miller said. “They didn’t reach out with any questions or to get any background information on what is even going on there. They just suddenly said, ‘Pack your stuff and get out.’”

According to Crockatt, research had been concluded on one plot when she arrived and left unattended at another, allowing invasive species to proliferate and threaten nearby collections. The arboretum’s decision was “based on alignment to our nonprofit mission,” she said.

With no other recourse, the Millers are hoping to replicate through grafting the seedling orchard they first planted in 2007, perhaps with duplicates in multiple locations to ensure longevity. They have yet to identify suitable host sites.

In late February, Diane and Amy Miller visited Dawes, along with Matt Thomas, a conservation biologist and Amy’s partner, to collect scionwood from 120 trees to begin rebuilding the repository. They will have two more opportunities to do so—in late summer, when they can gather budwood, and again during the trees’ dormancy next winter.

The group won’t be able to salvage everything, and what they do collect will no longer be growing on its own roots, which diminishes their ability to fully evaluate a tree’s potential, Diane Miller said.

Once the Millers have rescued what they can from the collection next spring, Crockatt said the trees will all be taken to local zoos to be browsed on by animals.

“It’s not like they’re going to be destroyed and forgotten,” Crockatt said. “They will serve a purpose.”

For apple breeders and growers, though, the trees’ highest purpose would be to remain in the ground at Dawes, where they can continue to serve as a vast library of genetic material whose potential can be explored over time.

“While we have it, we should protect it and try to preserve it, lest we shortsightedly allow it to be lost,” Matthew Miller said. “At that point, it may be difficult, if not impossible, to recover those lost genetics.”

The post In an Ohio Apple Grove, Researchers Race to Save Rare Varieties appeared first on Civil Eats.

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We may consider it a lackluster salad garnish, but alfalfa is really high in protein + vitamins, a critical part of the #goatmaxxing method, plus it performs nitrogen fixation in the process

Using morphological and molecular biological analyses, the research team isolated a previously unknown species of fungus from the rhizosphere – the soil region surrounding plant roots – of alfalfa. The newly identified microorganism, named the MXBP304 strain, belongs to the Coniothyrium genus.

According to the researchers, the microbial strain can precisely target weed seeds without affecting the germination of alfalfa seeds or interfering with the growth of young seedlings. It also leaves the soil's ecological structure intact, allowing weed control to be achieved with what scientists describe as "zero pollution."

We ask nothing of fungus but it provides so much. Thank yuo

Sylvia, who works for the Swedish military, and Johan, an IT professional, built a family home fully enclosed in a greenhouse as a way to live with nature instead of resisting it. They called it Naturhus Torpadal.

Sylvia grew up on a farm; Johan grew up in the city. The greenhouse became their compromise—combining her instinct for growing food with his interest in systems and autonomy.

Their glass envelope moderates the coastal climate near Gothenburg, expands their growing season, and allows Sylvia to cultivate plants she never imagined possible in Sweden, including grapes.

Beneath the greenery is a resilient infrastructure: the couple produces their own water and electricity and treats their own waste. They are one of only two households in Sweden not required to connect to the municipal sewer system, turning their waste into a resource instead.

During the pandemic, this autonomy became even more apparent. With Johan working from home, he barely felt the disruption outside; daily life inside the greenhouse continued with planting, harvesting, and raising their children.

For Sylvia and Johan, the project is more than a home—it’s a small, self-sustaining ecosystem. Their greenhouse homestead shows how a family can live resiliently by cooperating with the natural systems that surround them.

I'm interested in the various harvest traditions like Halloween, Samhain, Day of the Dead and whether those are still alive or not, from all over the world. Putting this post here, because these are traditions heavily tied to agriculture.

I'll share the one local to myself: In Finland and Karelia there used to be a harvest festival called Kekri. Natopedia link

Kekri, also known as keyri, köyri, köyry (in Torne Valley) kööri and kegri (in Karelian),[1] is a Finnish and Karelian harvest festival, celebrated in the fall. Kekri was once widely celebrated in Finland and Karelia, but it has been largely eclipsed by Christmas, to which many old Kekri traditions have migrated. Historically, Kekri has also referred to a deity.

Kekri was the end of the years agricultural work. It was also when the farmhands and maids got their yearly wages and a week of freetime from work. Ancestors were symbolically bathed, fed and honored and there were many funny traditions like how the master of a house had to be drunk all Kekri to ensure good harvest the following year. The sower of the farm on the other hand had to be sober to ensure the same thing.

This part resembles Halloween quite a bit:

Masked visitors

On the second day of Kekri, people traditionally paid visits to friends and neighbors, dressed up as various types of masked characters, referred to as kekritärs (kekri-ess) or kekripukkis (kekri goat) (cf. souling). The masked visitors would demand hospitality, threatening to break the oven if their requests were not heeded. These Kekri characters of the past are commonly viewed as predecessors to Finland's modern-day Santa Claus, Joulupukki (literally Yule Goat).

This tradition has survived near the Baltic in the West of Finland where this tradition of dressing up and going from house to house as "goats" moved to the 6th of January and became knows as going out as "nuuttipukki". I grew up in a village that still does this and it was fun to have a sort of Halloween in January when nobody in Finland yet knew what Halloween is and definitely did not celebrate it. The only dress up thing that was nationwide was kids going out on Easter to give blessings and receive candy.

In the picture a kekripukki (kekri goat) likely preparing to break the oven, museum picture)

Interestingly this Kekri week was also a week of no gender norms, people would dress up as whatever they wanted.

What natopedia and other English sources fail to mention is that the traditions disappeared through the influence of Christianity. The church wanted to get rid of Kekri traditions as pagan.

At the Bishop's Inspection in 1729, the priesthood was urged to advise the population to give up this pagan tradition. In fear of punishment, many started to do the celebrations in secret. The church also implemented the sacred days into the calendar and eventually the tradition became what is now called Christmas. The church influence also got rid of the sacred trees people had growing in their yards. The ban on Kekri was so strict that little by little the tradition was forgotten.

In the last ten years or so it has been making a comeback after the US style halloween has been pushed on the population more and more. Not everyone likes it and therefore people have started to look into local harvest traditions that have just been lost. The first Kekri thing I remember seeing was a Kekri food week in a rural school I was a substitute teacher in, the school lunches were made as dishes that would have been eaten during Kekri all week and the history of the foods was featured.

Did you know that in Finland people used to carve lanterns from turnips instead of pumpkins, but lanterns were indeed a part of the celebration.

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=xbBdIG--b58

Pretty interesting lecture series here. Trees are less fragile than grain-yielding grasses, not vulnerable to weeds. Nuts are a high-calorie food, so why not get bulk calories from nut-orchards instead of fields of broadacre crops?

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=CJpitVC4mzs
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=vINVDKJQKcU
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=N862oye1HTY
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=y1NB1O7sLMs
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=-ZzT6lF2Fjc
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=3PWjMQllTpo
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=IsW0icwlnuo
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=jpTXVWmv4I8
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErgHXYIJidU
• https://youtube.com/watch?v=E73t7DU6zZI

The paper looks at breadfruit, air potato, carob, chestnut, Enset, banana/plantain, sago palm, evergreen oak/encina, yeheb nut, Mayan breadnut, perennial beans, almonds, nuts, olives, coconuts, avocado, honey locust pods, and tahitian chestnut and their potential to replace part of the dependency on cereals.

It would be great if we could get more of our food from trees. It would reduce labour input and pesticide input.

You can also multitask the land better often with trees. My grandfather used to have cattle among breadfruit trees on his farm. Breadfruit is great stuff, lots of uses.

This article makes me want to take a closer look at Brazil nuts. Figure 3 shows a yield close to 5 t/ha and being nuts they are more nutritionally dense than boring starches. (There's a lecture series you can find on youtube called something like 'nuts as a staple food')

Then around Figure 4 they talk about how trees growing perennials would lock up more carbon than cropland.

Abstract

Ecological intensification of agro-ecosystems, based on the optimization of ecological functions such as biological pest control, to replace agrochemical inputs is a promising route to reduce the ecological footprint of agriculture while maintaining commodity production. However, the performance of organic farming, often considered as a prototype of ecological intensification, in terms of pest control remains largely unknown. Here, using two distinct meta-analyses, we demonstrate that, compared to conventional cropping systems, (i) organic farming promotes overall biological pest control potential, (ii) organic farming has higher levels of overall pest infestations but (iii) that this effect strongly depends on the pest type. Our study shows that there are lower levels of pathogen infestation, similar levels of animal pest infestation and much higher levels of weed infestation in organic than in conventional systems. This study provides evidence that organic farming can enhance pest control and suggests that organic farming offers a way to reduce the use of synthetic pesticide for the management of animal pests and pathogens without increasing their levels of infestation.

....melting ice sheets dumping vast quantities of freshwater into the ocean could change the currents of the Atlantic Ocean. The new modeling suggested, though, that complete collapse of the Atlantic Ocean’s current system is no longer “theoretical” and could occur much faster and more completely than anticipated.

....“We’ve done surprisingly little preparing for these kinds of shocks,” said Roni Neff, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Center for a Livable Future. When Neff and her colleagues surveyed local governments on food system resilience, “the people that responded were those that were already thinking about this, and of those that responded only 10 percent considered their local jurisdiction to be prepared.”

....While the U.S. Department of Agriculture does have grants and loans for building a more resilient food system, that’s far from being a comprehensive plan for responding to giant climate shocks. “Some of us in academia have been trying to push the governmental agencies to take notice of this,” Puma said, “with little success to date.”

....study of New York City in 2016 estimated “the New York City food system holds roughly 4 to 5 days of regular consumption of food stock on average”—not an encouraging figure if one were to imagine incoming supply chains being disrupted.)

....there’s “low-hanging fruit” like fighting the increasing “consolidation of farmland,” reducing overreliance on fertilizer and pesticides, and being a little more skeptical of so-called smart agriculture: “If you’re introducing the use of drones into the agricultural system, that’s a new type of risk to take into account.”

hate the word "masterclass" but a great lecture nonetheless