A Facebook post by Dag Endresen of NordGen alerted me to the recent publication of the biography of Bent Skovmand, entitled The Viking in the Wheat Field: A Scientist’s Struggle to Preserve the World’s Harvest. Bent Skovmand (1945-2007), a student of Norman Borlaug, was a very influential figure in the world of conservation and use of crop genetic resources in general, and of wheat in particular. The director of the Nordic Gene Bank (now NordGen) when he died, the books he kept in his office are touchingly maintained at NordGen’s Alnarp headquarters as a separate collection. I’ll be trying to get hold of the book.
Nibbles: Two fish
- Thai village brings back mangroves, fish.
- Elsewhere, aquaculture is forced further and further offshore.
The cattle of the Yakuts have their day in the sun at last
Juha Kantanen, a research scientist at MTT Agrifood Research Finland, had an announcement out on the DAD-Net discussion forum a couple of days ago which reproduced an MTT press release on what sounds like a fascinating book, Sakha Ynaga — Cattle of the Yakuts.
Siberia’s last remaining indigenous breed of domestic cattle, the Sakha Ynaga, or Yakutian cattle, inhabit the lands surrounding the Lena River in Russia’s remote Sakha Republic (Yakutia). During the soviet era, the Yakutian cattle were driven to virtual extinction, but thanks to dogged preservation efforts this remarkable, hardy breed has endured to the present day.
A multidisciplinary team of researchers from MTT Agrifood Research Finland and the University of Helsinki’s Aleksanteri Institute explored the genetic uniqueness of the Yakutian cattle and the effect of social and cultural factors on the survival of the breed through periods of major upheaval in Russia’s history. The findings of this insightful study have now been published in the book Sakha Ynaga — Cattle of the Yakuts. The book champions the call for preservation of biodiversity, at a time when countless indigenous breeds around the world are facing the brink of extinction.
The book can be ordered from Bookstore Tiedekirja.
Featured: Dietary diversification
Emmanuel’s supervisor, Glenn Hyman, has a problem with dietary diversification as an alternative to fortification.
But how would you target a diet diversity intervention? The problem here is that the populations most at risk of micronutrient deficiency are the ones that cannot afford diverse diets.
And he may have a point…
Oneida corn story goes home
Last night we received a very nice message from Eve Emshwiller, who teaches an ethnobotany course. She had some welcome things to say about the blog, and then told us this story.
I looked at the site you nibbled yesterday on Oneida corn, and then sent it on to a Menominee graduate student who began working with me this semester, Diana Peterson. She had done her master’s thesis on Oneida three sisters agriculture, including that same maize. She then sent the link on to Jeff Metoxen, the Oneida man pictured and quoted in that article. He hadn’t seen the article previously, and was excited to see it in print! So, thanks to your blog and a sequence of forwarding of links, the news finally got back to the Oneida farmer himself. I’m glad to have been part of that path, and extra glad to have learned of it from your blog.
Which kind of summarizes in a few sentences why we do this. Thanks, Eve and Diana.