Greetings from Nairobi. I’m here for a week’s rest and relaxation, which does not of course preclude blogging! Anyway, what I wanted to write about has nothing to do with Kenya. Or at least I don’t think buckwheat — our subject this evening — is grown here. It all started a week back when I went up to Lucca, near Pisa, for the weekend. That included a lot of eating, of course, and one of the dishes that particularly struck me was a main course composed of a thin tortilla-type thing, folded up, and filled with a nice sauce. I can’t remember the name of the dish, but the tortilla was made of “grano Saraceno,” according to the menu. I hadn’t heard the name, but a little snooping confirmed it to be buckwheat. A rarish crop in Italy, but nevertheless the basis of some interesting traditional recipes. Now, I knew a little about buckwheat, but next to nothing about its nutritious relative, Tartar(y) buckwheat. And I certainly didn’t know that there’s an easily de-hulled variety of this crop called rice-tartary which promises to be a boon to breeders. Nor that you can emasculate the flowers with hot water, which could also be useful if you’re trying to make crosses. I should eat out more.
Mapping agricultural biodiversity et al.
The new Information Development is out and it is a special issue on “GIS and Spatial Information for Rural Development.” You can read the abstracts of papers on, among other things:
- generating detailed crop distribution maps for sub-Saharan Africa from much coarser input data ((You, Liangzhi; Wood, Stanley; Wood-Sichra, Ulrike; Chamberlin, Jordan. Generating plausible crop distribution maps for sub-Saharan Africa using a spatial allocation model. Information Development 2007 23: 151-159))
- “An Atlas of the Ethiopian Rural Economy” ((Chamberlin, Jordan; Tadesse, Mulugeta; Benson, Todd; Zakaria, Samia. An Atlas of the Ethiopian Rural Economy: expanding the range of available information for development planning. Information Development 2007 23: 181-192))
- a “Socio-Economic Atlas of Vietnam” ((Epprecht, Michael; Heinimann, Andreas; Minot, Nicholas; Muller, Daniel; Robinson, Tim. From Statistical Data to Spatial Knowledge — informing decision-making in Vietnam. Information Development 2007 23: 193-204))Â
This last is actually online, and well worth having a look at, although it is pretty huge to download.
Cow vs goat milk
We’ve blogged before about how goat’s milk is more digestible than cow’s milk, but makes cheese which is lower in beta carotene. Now it turns out that goat’s milk has “higher bioavailability of iron, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium.” Goat’s milk has about 2% of the market. ((In the UK.)) Got (goat’s) milk?
China to protect biodiversity
China’s new National Strategy for Plant Conservation has just been launched, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) has a write-up about it. An introduction to the strategy is also available. Agricultural biodiversity gets quite a high profile, which is great, and unusual for such exercises. Here’s a few quotes to give you the flavour:
China is home to some of the world’s most important crop, medicinal and ornamental species, such as tea, rice, soy beans, ginseng, magnolias, camellias & peaches.
China is … keen to investigate novel methods of ‘eco-agriculture’, in a bid to introduce more sustainable land management practices to a country which is still largely agricultural.
The system known as the “3R Model†(Resources, Research, and Resolution) has recently produced a unique golden-fleshed kiwi fruit, bred from wild native kiwi vines that were conserved by the project.
A national Chinese seed bank (containing 340,000 accessions) and a network of regional seed banks ensures the long-term conservation of the genes of important crops, such as rice and soya beans.
Over 11,000 species are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Of the 600 plant species that are regularly used, sustainable cultivation systems have been developed for 200 species, thereby preventing their unsustainable harvesting from the wild.
One thing I didn’t understand, though. There’s a picture of a cultivated field in the introduction to the strategy, and also in the BGCI piece, with the following caption:
Fields of cultivated ‘wild’ barley, found only in the Chinese Himalayas, demonstrate the importance of local and ethnic crop varieties.
No doubt there are wild species of Hordeum in the Chinese Himalayas. But what does it mean to say that they are cultivated? Similarly, there is cultivated barley there. But what does it mean to say that it is “wild”?
Youth farmstands in the Garden State
Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station has something called a Youth Farmstand Program. Farmstands — market stalls selling local produce, often organically grown — offer “a hands-on entrepreneurial experience to youth in the mechanics of owning and operating a small business, based on the premise that experience really is the best teacher.” They also provide “a unifying framework for youth, farmers & communities to achieve success. Each needs the others’ support to grow and prosper, so everyone wins!” Sounds like a great idea to promote agricultural biodiversity, better nutrition and youth development all at the same time.