You may have come across the “100 things I’ve done” meme. Jeremy succumbed to it, and a lot of fun it was too reading about it. I’ve just come across a somewhat more specialized version, by a geologist. Maybe there’s room for an agrobiodiversity version? If so, here are ten things that I think should be included, off the top of my head. I haven’t done them all, but I hope to, some day.
- Harvest (or buy in the supermarket) and then prepare and eat a dish of traditional leafy greens in Africa.
- Botanize crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent.
- Talk cassava cultivars with the inhabitants of an Amazonian village.
- Take part in the Ethiopian coffee ceremony at the coffee field genebank near Jimma.
- See volunteer sweet potato seedlings being protected in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.
- Visit the Vavilov Institute.
- Walk through a milpa at harvest time.
- Look at potato varieties and wild relatives around Lake Titicaca.
- Visit the Ifugao rice terraces.
- Make the pilgrimage up to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Leave your suggestions in the comments.
Why only globetrotting things? The idea that only far flung and exotic items merit interest seems dated.
How about started a garden
Grown my own seed
Eaten a breakfast, lunch, and dinner grown in one garden
Tasted a local food not found in local stores
Used my grandmother’s recipe
Kept track of blooming flowers in my neighborhood
Introduced a new vegetable to an experienced gardener
Grown a garden using permaculture principles
Harvested wild berries
Gotten to know neighbors through argo-biodiversity interests
Planted fruit trees
Learned to prune a berry bush
etc…
Quite right, thanks for pointing out that I was propping up an outdated and discredited paradigm.