Author: Luigi Guarino

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Notes from Cartagena

I’m in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia at a conference on the state of plant genetic resources in Latin America and one of the presenters this morning said that people in the region of Iquitos in Peru consume 193 fruit species, of which 57 are found in local markets. I had never run across this statistic, and was a bit skeptical, but it’s clearly extremely solid, coming from a paper by one of the greats of tropical American botany. Only thing is, the paper is 20 years old. Would be good to count again. I bet that number will be down a bit.

Another interesting little bit of information that emerged is that Chile has, since 2006, a “…Comité Agro Gastronómico, entidad público-privada que busca unir la producción agrícola y del mar con la gastronomí­a chilena, de manera de poner en las mesas de Chile y el mundo preparaciones que rescaten productos que reflejen la identidad nacional.” 1 This kind of thing can be taken too far, and I don’t know whether a committee is necessarily the best way to do it, but the idea of promoting agrobiodiversity through gourmet “ethnic” cooking is not a bad one.

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Nibbles: Fraxinus, Sheep, Fish, Potato, Chickens, Eden, Microlivestock, Saliva, Mashua, Vine

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AIDS experts recognize importance of diet, apparently

You may remember a little discussion about agrobiodiversity and AIDS that we had here some time ago. Basically, I was wondering why there weren’t more biodiversity-based interventions to support people living with HIV/AIDS. Well, our friend Arwen Bailey now informs us that this came up at a recent seminar given by Dr Tim Johns at Bioversity International HQ in Rome, and he said that at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico last August, there was “a feeling that clinical interventions have gone as far as they can go without addressing the environment and diets of affected people.” Apparently the session on biodiversity and AIDS was standing room only. Arwen found a couple of abstracts on the topic on the programme. Thanks, Arwen.

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Downmarket

More on the effect of the economic downturn on agrobiodiversity. First, there’s a series of reports from markets around the world from the BBC. A couple include information on food. From Beijing:

In the face of the economic crisis, Ms Liu said Chinese people are going back to buying basic vegetables like Chinese cabbage and potatoes.

And from Crawford Market, Mumbai:

Even spice sellers are feeling the pinch. Jabbar Prajapati says the cost of saffron has rocketed from 60 rupees (£0.82 / $1.20) per gram last year, to 300 rupees (£4 / $6) per gram. “People are not ready to buy at those prices,” he says.

Also, The Economist has a story about “victory gardens” in Little Rock, Arkansas. The money quote:

Many gardeners are focusing on “heirloom plants” rare varieties from earlier times that do not appeal to agribusiness.