Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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Forest gardens rediscovered

A salutary tale from Fred Bahnson over on the Nourishing the Planet blog. He describes how the farmers of Quintana Roo in Mexico managed to recover from disastrous advice. More than 15 years ago, government extension agents told the farmers to grow pitaya, one of the epiphytic cacti also known as dragonfruit. Unfortunately the extension agents knew only one way to grow them, on concrete and wire trellises. And that collapsed, leaving the farmers high and dry.

Bahson relates how, instead of giving up, the farmers adapted their traditional milpa system to grow pitaya, a story with a very happy ending, at least for the farmer Bahnson visited:

On his three hectares he harvests around 12 tons of dragonfruit per year. At $1/kilo, he’s earning $12,000 annually, almost double Mexico’s median annual household income of $7,297. And all that food coming from his milpa means a lower grocery bill than most city dwellers.

The “experts” have apparently returned, to learn how the farmers did it.

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Plant seeks (en) light (enment)

On a quiet Saturday afternoon, one’s thoughts are liable to coalesce around the strangest things. Hence this post. I admired, briefly, Kew’s speeded up video of a lotus blooming, and thought no more of it.

Until I came across an illuminating post over at Gardenvisit.com that happened to be about … the lotus, specifically the sacred lotus of Buddhism. And, of course, what I didn’t know was the symbolic reason for the sacred status of the lotus:

The Sacred Lotus has importance in Buddhism because it grows from murky waters and struggles to raise its pure and beautiful flower into the sunlight, with the lesson is [sic] that humans should do likewise.

Which is as interesting, in its own way, as Kew’s koan for further contemplation: that the flower opens twice, to prevent self pollination.

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Nibbles: Corn, Saffron, Pacific, Carrots, Food, Quarantine, Medicinal plants

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Featured: Conservation

Brian Ford-Lloyd is moved swiftly to action by Slow Food:

Hold on! Whoever thought those involved in food production could undertake effective conservation of genetic diversity? Slow food enthusiasts are not the only ones to discard the ‘not-so-good’ – the whole of domestication must have been based on it. Hunter gatherers rejected the more spiny/hairy/thick seed coated/bitter tasting/alkoloid containing in favour of those plants with less of those no-so-good features. Plant breeders have traditionally done the same, but who said plant breeders made the best conservationists?

Leaving aside the alkaloids, obviously, one would have to agree. Agriculture grows by selection, and selection requires rejection. But where does Slow Food fit into all this?