- What makes a species “underutilized”? Your chance to tell FAO and Bioversity International
- Global awareness of biodiversity campaign in the Philippines.
- Staying in the Philippines, drought imperils rice terraces.
- Database builders: read this and weep.
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.
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.
Featured: Trees available
Martin Mbui has responded again, with great practical information about Trees in Kenya:
I have seedlings of avocado (grafted with hass variety) passion ( yellow passion grafted with purple passion), mango (Kent, Tommy, vdyke and apple mango) pawpaw etc. Anybody willing to plant contact me via cell No. 0720242913 or through my email address martinmbui@yahoo.com.
Go ahead, plant ’em.
Nibbles: Corn, Saffron, Pacific, Carrots, Food, Quarantine, Medicinal plants
- “Can corn be taught to fix its own nitrogen?” Probably not.
- Many saffron clones identical shock.
- New Agriculturist on agrobiodiversity conservation and use in the Pacific in general and Pohnpei in particular. Go Local!
- An idiosyncratic take on carrot diversity and history.
- The Indigenous Food Systems Network has a new website. h/t PAR
- Landscape of Quarantine, an exhibition that addresses, among other things, the spread of pests and diseases.
- Semillas Sagradas — Sacred Seeds.