Agrobiodiversity everywhere, if you look

My weekend reading included two pieces that I felt sure would prove well written and engaging, but which I frankly did not think would yield much in the way of agrobiodiversity fodder. Turns out I was wrong, at least on the latter point.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s review of the Encyclopedia of Exploration 1850 to 1940 by Raymond John Howgego is indeed a model of its type: informative, stimulating and charming. It also includes a reference to the late nineteenth-century Swiss ethnobotanist of Paraguay Moisés Bertoni, who described Stevia rebaudiana, a controversial sugar substitute. And another to the Société Impériale Zoologique d’Acclimatation, which had a famous birthday boy as a loyal member in its early days. ((It’s now the Société nationale de protection de la nature.)) A Colonel Henry Wayne apparently won the society’s gold medal for his efforts to introduce camels to the US.

The second piece that intrigued me over the weekend was an article by Matt Jenkins in the Smithsonian Magazine about the elite pilots who guide ships through the treacherous, sand-barred mouth of the Columbia River in Oregon. What’s the agrobiodiversity angle? Well, Portland and other upriver ports are the the main gateway in the US for its wheat and barley exports. The river pilots can shut down the entrance to the river if conditions are too bad, but, to quote one of them:

“When we shut down the bar for two days, trains are backed up all the way into the Midwest. And just like a traffic jam on the freeway, once you clear the wreck, it takes a long time for it to smooth out again.”

It’s a great image. The world’s interdependence for agricultural products ((And coincidentally I came across a great graphical representation of that yesterday, thanks to blogging machine Tom Barnett.)) resting on the judgement of a dozen or so salty sea dogs in the Pacific Northwest.