Via Hills and Plains Seedsavers, a video from Send a Cow, the people behind the keyhole gardens of Lesotho. To every thing, there is a season, clearly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWYI’m going to quibble, just a bit. Not one of the veggies given a namecheck in the video could be considered local. Are there really no nutritious and neglected species that the people of Lesotho could be growing? I couldn’t find any.
And don’t miss the extended comment on my original post from Jack C, a retired Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. His view:
If the outside world wishes to play a role in improving Lesotho, they need to be ready to put up real investments that open up non-agricultural means of economic development. Short of that, the Basotho themselves need to implement the educational, social, and land reforms necessary to give those struggling keyhole gardeners the option of leaving the land. Praise of their industriousness is welcome, but what they truly need are choices. The land can longer support them.
Salutary.
Just a quick response to your comments. I’m the chap at Send a Cow who put this video together. I’m glad you like it. The video is aimed at children aged 7-11 in the UK and so the vegetables named need to be recognisable to them (and they may not have even come across a beetroot in the UK!). There were other, local veggies there, but new things like spinach and papa are enough to introduce UK kids to. We introduce them to other varieties in follow up material and through future work on our ‘African Gardens’ work with schools in the UK.
I do agree with your further comments about the Basotho leaving the land, but with global food prices soaring, we all could do with some agricultural know-how.
Congratulations John; nice job. (You might want to consider putting together something for our competition.) It wasn’t clear to me that the video was for children in the UK, and I agree, some of them may never have seen a beetroot (or a cow).
I hope you will be doing something on local vegetables and varieties, and maybe also persuading more British kids that gardens at school and at home — British gardens, not African ones — are just as good for them as they are for the young people of developing countries.