- World Bank tells African governments to “retool their agriculture policies, particularly to include a far greater focus on agribusiness as a critical driver of future development”. Of course.
- (Undated) news from IDRC about a new mini-mill for minor millets.
- Participatory potato breeding. Story of a Dutch organic farmer’s efforts to produce and market Bionica.
“Cromwo” unmasked as Ozoroa insignis
Does anyone know what the scientific name might be for the tree known as cromwo in Pokot #kenya @icraf @cifor_forets
— Luigi Guarino (@AgroBioDiverse) February 28, 2013
For the past week I’ve been in a bit of a tiz trying to identify a tree. Of course I searched for cromwo online, but all that turned up was an echo-chamber in which the “information” originally provided went round and round in a self-congratulatory cacophony. We did get some helpful hints of where to look, but they turned up empty too. “Forget it, Jeremy, it’s Chinatown,” someone said. Like Jake Gittes, I couldn’t do that.
And then it hit me. One of my longest-standing and, I like to think, deepest friendships is with a very famous writer and activist who, when we met, had just returned from an ethnobotanical study among … the Pokot! But that was then. Might she know?
I fired off an email. She fired back a reply designed to prepare me for the worst. And then, bingo!
This is your lucky day!
Kromwo is, according to the Kenyan Agriculture and Research Institute’s Agriculture Research Department’s report on the plants I collected (dated 10th april 1979), Ozoroa insignis Del. (Anacardiaceae)
Plural is Kram.
Certainly was! She’d also dutifully noted one of the uses for kromwo:
Burn and mix with milk for flavour.
I cannot describe how happy this made me, because with a formal scientific name, the “correct” transliteration being not much help, it is possible to go looking for additional information. You can find photographs, scientific investigations of the plant’s biochemical properties, misleading English names, and loads of other stuff.
Scientific names really do matter.
New HQ for CGIAR
Ground broken yesterday in Montpellier. Very impressive. But am I the only one sees a striking visual metaphor or two in this architectural vision?
Nibbles: Perennial grains, @gr0b10d1v3r$1ty, Games, Leeks, Millets in Rome, Insectivory, Bangladesh, Locusts, Women, Ricinus, Bamboo sequence, Bio-innovate conference
- That old perennial perennial grains featured in a new online magazine.
- @gr0b10d1v3r$1ty: Password to a More Secure Agriculture. See what Fabrice did there?
- Five games that will revolutionise your understanding of agricultural economics. No, really. We particularly like Bohnanza.
- The botanist in the kitchen looks at leeks; be ready for St David’s Day 2014.
- Most Ancient Romans Ate Like Animals. Prize for most obnoxious headline about NUS?
- Looking forward to BBC R4 on insectivory next week.
- Bangladesh encouraging agricultural diversification.
- A plague of locusts, just in time for Passover.
- Daily Kos does a big number on women in agriculture. Worth a bookmark.
- And Kew does a number on castor oil seeds. Breaking Bad fans will want to read it.
- We haven’t linked to a genome study for ages, so let’s hear it for bamboo.
- One of a whole lot of presentations from the recent Bio-innovate conference in Ethiopia, courtesy of ILRI.
Evolution strikes back
Ford Denison drew attention to this astonishing photograph of giant ragweed ((And you gotta love that binomial: Ambrosia trifida.)) lording it over a crop of harvest-ready maize.
Nothing unusual about that — being a giant anything gives you a licence to lord it over lowlier things. The point, of course, is that the corn crop is Round-up ready and so, of course, is the weed. More facts and figures at The International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds.
Ford also pointed to an interesting discussion on the difficulties of defining anything as slippery as farming philosophy by talking about what is and isn’t permitted.
To give the consumer a clear, black and white choice, organic marketing strategy offers a black and white world where all human-made pesticides and fertilizers, and all genetically modified crops are bad, regardless of their value to farmers or to sustainability. Even limited use is prohibited because it would blur the marketing lines.
Amen. Although let’s not forget that good old-fashioned soft soap is as human-made as anything. In the old days, I always advised beginning allotmenteers to blitz an unkempt plot with glyphosate and then get as holy as you like about being organic. Nothing is more soul-destroying than discovering couch grass or ground elder infesting the asparagus and strawberry beds. Of course, today, it might take more than glyphosate.