A short piece in AVRDC’s latest monthly newsletter tells the story of how that institute is producing thousands of “vegetable seed kits” with support from the government of Taiwan and handing them over to a university and the army in Thailand for distribution to people affected by flooding and landslides in a couple of different regions of that country.
It’s an interesting idea, but as usual the article left me wanting to know more. Like how were the varieties of mungbean, okra and kangkong chosen? In fact, how were the crops chosen? And did all the thousands of kits have the same varieties? And, more fundamentally, how did AVRDC know that vegetable seeds were needed in the first place? Seed provision in the wake of disasters is a complicated business.
