- Camels make a comeback in Rajasthan.
- Globalization comes to Russian kvas production.
- Mangosteen finally allowed into US. NY Times video about exotic fruits. Via.
- While the rest of the world frets about high food prices, US declares National Watermelon Month.
- USDA tries to keep abreast of honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder.
- Teaching about soil microbial agrobiodiversity.
To all our Mexican readers
!Feliz Cinco de Mayo! You’ll be pleased to hear the California Avocado Commission is thinking of you too.
Nibbles: Trees, AGRA, pig meat, culinodiversity, fund raising, seed, data
- Let them eat leaves: farmers to plant trees in Kenya.
- For the archives: Rockefeller Foundation’s original blueprint for A Green Revolution for Africa (PDF).
- Keeping it real, computers and genetics monitor Iberian ham.
- Eat diversity to conserve it.
- Three-headed coconut tree for sale. To you, one million bucks.
- Video on FAO seed project in Afghanistan. I just hope somebody’s taking care of the landraces.
- Scientists exhorted to geo-reference. IRRI GIS staff unavailable for comment.
Nibbles: Hotspots, tea, silk, photos, food prices, basil, AGRA, rice, Denmark, SADC
- Economist blogger tells conservationists to stop with the hotspot mapping already, and conserve something. DIVA-GIS developers unavailable for comment.
- Some of the tea in China.
- Filipinos abandon cannabis for silk. Jeremy comments: you can smoke silk?
- Nice tree photos.
- FT does the interactive thing with rising food prices. Via. Let them eat pasta, I say.
- Wanted: more mid-sized farms to fight The Man.
- Watch out world. Mississippi set to industrialise basil production.
- Ten reasons AGRA won’t work.
- A tale of two rice-growers; how the crop has fared in Brazil and China.
- Danes meet to save seeds.
- Southern Africans meet to save seeds.
How much would Kenyans pay for yellow maize?
We’ve blogged a few times about the preference for white maize in Africa, despite the nutritional advantages of the yellow kind. A recent paper in Food Policy puts some numbers on that. It also gives an historical explanation for the preference, at least for Kenya:
The high demand for maize for the war industry and the support of strong lobbying efforts by European settlers, combined with pest problems in millet and sorghum, made maize the major food crop in Kenya by the time of the First World War. A major turning point was when the marketing board started to refuse to buy yellow maize. From then on, only white maize was grown in the central highlands. The maize research program in Kenya, one of the most successful in the region, produced many improved varieties but, given the established market preferences and focus on the highlands, all those were white. It can thus be argued that the dominance of white dent varieties in East Africa was a case of path dependency, caused by a range of favoring factors ([Rubey et al., 1997] and [Smale and Jayne, 2003]). Furthermore, once people are used to a particular food with particular characteristics these characteristics easily become preferred traits.
The numbers are striking. In a survey conducted at small mills, kiosks and supermarkets, 600 consumers asked for a price discount of a third to a half for yellow maize. They were willing to pay a premium for fortified maize, but of only 6-7%. The adoption of biofortified varieties clearly faces a daunting challenge:
We conclude that substantial efforts will be needed to make biofortified, yellow maize varieties acceptable to the urban consumers. A reduction in price would clearly help, and lower income consumers would be more responsive, but the price difference would have to be substantial. Formal education seems to increase the preference for white maize and has no effect on the preference for fortified. Therefore, special educational and awareness programs seem indicated. Further research is, however, needed to assess what information and awareness is needed for consumers to change their behavior. To develop appropriate awareness campaigns, the sources of this type of information need to be assessed.
What price leafy greens?