- FAO sets data free. About time.
- Presentation on drought risk and preparedness around the world. Nice maps.
- A Facebook for seeds?
- The diversity of Jerusalem artichoke. In France.
- Coffee certification 101.
- Nice plug for SPC’s Centre for Pacific Crops and Trees.
- The fig of choice in San Francisco.
- Back to traditional rice varieties in India. But forward to new pigeonpea varieties in Malawi. Go figure.
- Navajo tea. Would love to try it.
- “The mixed (east-west) affiliation of Mongolian cattle parallels the mixed affiliation of Mongolians themselves.”
- Lancet article mentions Lois Englberger and her Go Local work in the Pacific in context of diabetes epidemic in Asia-Pacific.
- Edible art.
- More on bringing back the aurochs. Does anyone really want one, though?
- Great variety of rare and exotic poultry breeds. Temptation to pun smuttily averted, mostly.
Drought in the land of the Diné
Carol Snyder Halberstadt, president and cofounder of Black Mesa Weavers for Life and Land, Inc., has sent this in via DAD-Net in response to our nibble of an NPR story on the Churro, and indeed an earlier post of ours. We look forward to more news from Carol on the Diné and their Churro sheep.
I’ll have to write you more in reply to the questions on your post — but I can add that several sources refer to the word “Navajo” (which is not the name for themselves — that’s Diné “The People”), is a Tewa word meaning “people of the cultivated fields.” The Diné were and are not only great shepherds and weavers, but also diversified and skilled farmers — planting corn, beans, melons, and squash, herbs and other plants — right to the present day. It’s a healthy and wise diet, supplemented by wild plants, pinyon nuts, and other bounty of the land — when the droughts permit.
About 8 years ago I had the privilege of visiting flourishing fruit orchards with peach trees in a well-populated Diné area on the farthest western edge of the Black Mesa region in Arizona, where a well-watered stream still flowed, springs still bubbled, and there were still wetlands and marshes.
It was a visit to a rare place like the entire Black Mesa region once was, before its aquifers and springs and wetlands and marshes were drawn down by Peabody Coal Company (beginning in 1968) and its 272-mile coal slurry pipeline drained the N-aquifer (pristine, pure glacial water, and the source of water for most of the region — Diné, Hopi, Anglo alike). And the drought of at least 20-years’ duration continues as well, as the effects of climate change and global warming intensify. Most of the washes and arroyos are dry; the wetlands and marshes are gone.
In 2005, the Mohave Generating Plant in Laughlin, Nevada, to which the slurry coal pipeline flowed was finally turned off (but the N-aquifer has still not recharged), and the battle against new coal mines and new uranium mines continues.
It’s worldwide… but wisdom perhaps may one day prevail.
When all the trees have been cut down,
when all the animals have been hunted,
when all the waters are polluted,
when all the air is unsafe to breathe,
only then will you discover you cannot eat money.~ Cree Prophecy
Hozhoogo nanina’a doo — may you walk in beauty, balance, sustenance, and health.
Sheep at Floatingsheep and among the Navajo
Floatingsheep.org is a great website “dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated Google Map placemarks.” Always fun, it occasionally even tackles agrobiodiversity issues. I’m still waiting for the guys to look at the distribution of the crops of the world, but for now I’ll have to settle for livestock. Here’s a quick look. There are closeups of different regions on the original post.
Those sheep hotspots in Arizona and New Mexico are no doubt due to the revival of the Navajo’s churro, the subject of an NPR story yesterday. And of one of our longer posts some months back. Yep, nothing much gets past us.
Nibbles: Vavilov, GOSPs, Robot rice, Carrots, Crisis, Shade cacao, Churro sheep of the Navajo, Sorghum beer, Papal diet, chocolate, Carnival
- World Genepool at the N.I. Vavilov Institute of Plant Industry and Its Utilization in Agriculture. Anyone got a copy?
- Gloucester Old Spot pigs get protection. Not that they really need it.
- BASF takes hi-tech breeding to the next level: 40,000 individual rice plants on a robotic ride to the future.
- Rebsie does carrots.
- The perfect storm is one element of the triple crisis.
- Nitrogen-fixing shade trees really do feed young cacao trees.
- “Sheep is your backbone.”
- Bringing gluten-free sorghum beer to the huddled masses … of Colorado.
- Eat like a pope. (Not much diversity.)
- Cadbury heiress fancies starting a new chocolate company? Maybe she’ll go all varietal.
- Scientia pro Publica. Carnival time again.
Saving crops through mechanization on three continents
While irrigation and market improvements could help, it would be reduction of processing time from hours to minutes made possible by mechanical hullers that might achieve most, “allowing women to take advantage of both their preferences for reduced labour loads and for the taste of millets in their everyday diets.”
I’ve quoted this before. It comes from a study looking at how so-called “minor” millets could be revitalized in India. A similar story of rescue of a traditional crop through the mechanization of processing is unfolding on another continent for quinoa. I was reminded of both by reading about the recent history of maize processing in Mexico on Rachel Laudan’s blog, which we have also blogged about.
…in Mexico, right up until about twenty years ago, large numbers of Mexican women were spending five hours a day grinding. Just imagine Mexico City: every household had somebody grinding tortillas. The landscape of Mexico City up until fifty years ago, and in many ways even later, is one of bakeries that make wheat breads for the upper class or perhaps for breakfast or the evening meal, and then in every household, somewhere in a back room, somebody grinding maize to make tortillas for the main meal of the day.
This has been completely changed, of course, by the wet-grinding mill, the tortilla-making machine, and finally, quite recently, the dehydration and packaging of wet-ground maize. One wonders whether bread would have made more of an inroad into Mexican cuisine, culture or no culture, if it hadn’t been for this revolution in processing. The resulting tortillas don’t taste as nice as home-made, but that’s a price most are willing to pay.
Mexican women that I have talked to are very explicit about this trade-off. They know it doesn’t taste as good; they don’t care. Because if they want to have time, if they want to work, if they want to send their kids to school, then taste is less important than having that bit of extra money, and moving into the middle class. They have very self-consciously made this decision. In the last ten years, the number of women working in Mexico has gone up from about thirty-three percent to nearly fifty percent. One reason for that—it’s not the only reason, but it is a very important reason—is that we’ve had a revolution in the processing of maize for tortillas.
Is a similar trade-off to be expected for those Indian millets and quinoa? And if so, can anything be done about it? In Mexico, they are already coming up with better tortilla machines “that rotate and flip the tortillas like you do on the comal, so they’re much closer to the taste of the handmade ones.” So says Rachel Laudan, adding: “…I think there will be a movement for good tortillas.” What I want to know is whether these tortilla machines will come to East Africa, so that we can eat maize meal in forms other than the very dull ugali.