Hot on the heels of of the illustrated Arabic botanical treatise I pointed to a few days ago comes a wonderful online exhibition about food, cooking and eating in medieval times from the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. Some great pictures of agrobiodiversity: crops and livestock, and their methods of preparation and presentation at the table. Via.
South helping North
Don’t despair if you haven’t much room — you can still get produce from plants grown in old tins and tubs on window sills or balconies.
That’s Faustino Reyes Matute from San Marcos, Honduras. Only one of the many subsistence farmers that are providing advice to allotment owners and others would-be farmers in Britain, people “who have turned to growing their own fruit and veg as the nation tightens its purse strings in the recession.” The Catholic charity Progressio is behind the great idea.
Aid Tree Aid
A BBC story alerted me yesterday to the existence of Tree Aid:
TREE AID was established as a charity in 1987 by a group of foresters in response to the famine in Africa, brought to public attention by Band Aid and Live Aid.
They wanted to provide a long term solution once the emergency relief efforts ended. They believed that trees could significantly reduce the vulnerability of communities in rural Africa’s drylands to drought and famine in the future.
Our current strategy expands on the original concept, focusing on forest management and income, food and medicines from trees.
I like their Cake Taste initiative, and their Tree of the Month feature. Seems very worthy. And it’s easy to donate online, should you feel so inclined.
Happy birthday to me!
And thanks to Charlotte for a present which brings together two pretty cool bits of agrobiodiversity.
Nibbles: Rice, Cattle and snails, Tropical forages, rattan
- The politics of rice in Cambodia.
- Who needs Moiled Cattle when you have snails. With video goodness.
- Providing a baseline for future tropical forages collecting in Vietnam?
- WWF plugs sustainable rattan in the Mekong.