It seems that two key organizations dealing with underutilized crops — the Sri Lanka-based International Centre for Under-utilised Crops (ICUC) and the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilised Species (GFU), based at Bioversity International in Rome — are merging and establishing a new entity. It will be called Crops for the Future (CroFu) and will be based in Malaysia. Best wishes for the future to CroFu.
Women’s Institute saves the apple
All this musing about worlds and grains of sand lately actually goes back to a discussion I had with Jeremy a few days back about whether or not it was worth nibbling a little piece on the apple fair which will take place this Sunday in the Millennium Orchard at Beverley Parks Nature Reserve in Long Lane, somewhere in East Yorkshire.
More than 40 varieties of apple are growing on more than 100 trees in East Riding Council’s 50-acre countryside attraction.
Unusual East Yorkshire varieties include the Hornsea Herring and Fillingham Pippin, which was found only in the Swanland area.
The council’s countryside access officers and members of the East Yorkshire Federation of Women’s Institutes (WI) joined forces to develop the orchard as a millennium project.
Worthy enough, but too parochial, Jeremy said. (Although he did in fact relent in the end.) And he’s quite right. English apples, for all their diversity, are not going to save the world like ones from Kazakhstan just might. And East Riding Council is hardly at the forefront of agricultural biodiversity conservation science. Fair enough. But I wonder if the Talgar Pomological Gardens in Kazakhstan and the Garrygalla Research Center in Turkmenistan might not have something to learn from the humble efforts of the East Yorkshire Federation of Women’s Institutes.
And vice versa, of course.
Nibbles: Worms, Cowpeas, Vavilov, Asian carp, Genebanks, Cassava
- DNA splits earthworms. Not many people hurt.
- Cookin’ up a mess of field peas. Not many people hurt.
- Talking about N.I. Vavilov at the NAL. I know, I know. He embodies a discredited and outmoded paradigm. But still.
- “I got hit in the back once,†said Mr. O’Hara. “It left an imprint of a fish.â€
- How Stuff Works: new one on genebanks; old one on seed banks.
- Cuba promotes hurricane-resistant cassava variety.
Compare and contrast
Sure, we live in a globalized world, a global village. Recent events in the financial markets are somewhat painful reminders of that. But that doesn’t mean things are the same everywhere, or even going in the same direction. High(er) altitude farming is alive and well in Nepal, as Jeremy just noted. But on its way to extinction in England. Better irrigation is boosting rice yields in Cambodia. While karez wells are being abandoned in Afghanistan. That’s one reason why I don’t believe the genetic erosion meta-narrative. There is always an exception. And although you can sometimes see the world in a grain of sand, it’s better to look at the beach.
Reflections on Barcelona
Danny Hunter has some thoughts on whether IUCN takes agricultural biodiversity seriously over at his Rurality blog. IUCN has been meeting in Barcelona, and Danny was there telling everyone about the Crop Wild Relative Global Portal. The money quote:
There still appears to be a massive disconnect between the global conservation and agrobiodiversity communities.
LATER: There is, of course, no consideration of agriculture in the latest work on Key Biodiversity Areas, apart, that is, from seeing it as a threat.