Jacob, on Agrobiodiversity everywhere:
Other world maps of commodity flows: Fertilizers; Sugar; Vegetables; Cotton; Flowers; Coffee and cocoa. The information is a bit dated, but the maps are cool.
Is all climate change bad?
Julián RamÃrez-Villegas commented on the 4th World Congress on Conservation Agriculture, which we nibbled last week. We’re elevating his comment to a guest post.
I was on that conference last week (the conservation agriculture one). Surprisingly, all people there are completely [certain] that climate change is completely bad (and that there are no chances of survival for our agricultural systems while we don’t switch to conservation agriculture). They always point [out] the bad side of each issue (i.e. they say: more rainfall means flooding and less rainfall means more water consumption) and put that as an universal truth, which is not very scientific I guess, but you judge.
They also have these global-averages indicating that population is growing up to a number we won’t be able to feed in 2050, that water resources are to decline worldwide, that yields are completely falling down, and that soil is about to lose its most important fertility properties. But I wasn’t able to find any specific case where all those things could happen at the same time. However, at the end of each presentation you find the phrase “more resources for R & D”, which from my side looks a bit suspicious.
Say, I’m not sure about what could happen up to 2050, but we have these GC models saying that impacts vary according to different areas. And I wonder if one could try to change all agricultural systems in the world (one by one) using such global averages and coarse statistics.
And a very quick question: “how would one expand/intensify a conservation agriculture system, if it is supposed to be used in smallholdings, which owners don’t have either the land or the financial support to expand/intensify their systems?”
Seek alternatives to maize, Kenyans told
Maybe, just maybe, the tide is beginning to turn away from derivative monocultures in countries where those crops are risky. That seems to be the case in Kenya, where the Daily Nation reports that farmers are being urged to plant other crops that are less risky. David Nyameino, chief executive of the Cereal Growers Association, says Kenya needs a commitment by the government to promote such foods.
Non-maize crops are viewed with a degree of suspicion by Kenyans, to the extent that farmers would rather gamble with the chance of good rains rather than plant them. …
“The government should emphasis on demand for other forms of food beside maize such as sweet potatoes, cassava, beans and peas,†Mr Nyameino told the Sunday Nation. “By this we are not taking away the demand for maize but are creating demand for other foods such as sorghum and millet.â€
Will government, and farmers, heed the message?
Corn thoughts
The idea that maize and man co-opted one another in pursuit of world domination is not as new as some people seem to think. I’m reading “Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance” by Arturo Warman, translated by Nancy Westrate. The original Spanish edition dates to 1988 and the translation to 2003, and although some bits have undoubtedly been updated the one over-riding impression I have so far is that all indicators of corn’s global dominance are probably now even greater than they are in the book. But that’s not why I am blogging.
Rather, I am puzzled by a reference on page 7 to a crop of American origin called sesame. That brought me up short. Sesame, Sesamum indicum, is almost certainly Indian in origin. Fortunately, Warman, or Westrate, gives a Latin name, Amaranthus cruentus, and says that it is known as Alegria, or “joy”. That makes more sense. A. cruentus is one of the three amaranth species grown for its grain, which admittedly does look a little like sesame seed. And it is the one often known in English as red amaranth, for the flower (and flour?) colour of a group of varieties that was, apparently, used as an element of ritual throughout the Americas. It represented blood, and that may have been the reason colonial religious nuts attempted to ban its cultivation and use. ((“Communion wine is completely different, you dolt.”))
Is there, then, some reason why Warman and Westrate refer to it as sesame? A Spanish word, perhaps?
All this is especially interesting in view of later paragraphs dedicated to the original domestication site of corn, Old World or New. ((It is hard to realize that this was once a subject of discussion.)) Part of the evidence that scholars adduced in support of an Old World origin was linguistic, names such as Egyptian sorghum, Syrian grain, grain from Mecca, Indian wheat, Spanish wheat, Portuguese grain and, here in Italy, Gran Turco. What all of these have in common is the notion that maize comes from somewhere else, often self-contradictory, but that was enough to send Old World supporters into a frenzy. They simply could not bring themselves to believe that such a wonderful plant had been domesticated by the lowly creatures of the Americas.
And speaking of names, it came as another shock to learn that Teosinte, the ancestor of maize, gets its name from a Nahuatl word for “corn of the gods”. How many other foods of the gods are there, I wonder?
Don’t show us the money
OK, you have spoken. We won’t place adverts on the site, for now. While we recognize our right to do so, we note also that we exist to serve you, our readers. The poll can stay up a little longer, just for fun.