- “Productivism” skewered one last time. Until the next time.
- The Malagasy Bean Renaissance. No, really.
- The science of beer foam. Now there’s no excuse.
- Cocktails can be biodiverse too. You bet they can.
- CIAT’s new strategy makes a splash. Genebank front and centre.
- New ICIPE director tells all. She used to work at CIAT, did you know?
- First edition of The State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources is out. Now to do something about it.
- Italy’s traditional rices preserved. Yes, Italy’s, you heard me.
- Agriculture was invented in the current interglacial. Why then, and not in the Eemian?
- Quinoa macronutrients exzzzzzzzamined.
- Your what-to-do-now guide to the medieval farm. Progress? Not what it’s cracked up to be.
- People of the Toluca valley! Expect researchers looking for wild potato genes resistant to late blight.
Nibbles: Seed drying, Yield gap trap, African fermentation, Rice & temp, Cultural exchange, Youth, Syria and ICARDA
- How to keep seeds dry. Don’t do this at home, folks! No, wait…
- Don’t get trapped in the yield gap, researchers told.
- Diana Buja breaks down banana brewing.
- Night temperatures cross important threshold for rice.
- Cultural change does not have to mean genetic erosion and loss of agrobiodiversity knowledge.
- Getting youth back into agriculture. Not just about the money.
- Latest from the tragic ICARDA situation
Pigeon Foot sorghum unmasked
You may remember my quandary over the meaning of the name of the sorghum variety Gadam El Hamam. Well, I had the opportunity of asking real experts at the ICRISAT office in Nairobi yesterday. They confirmed, first of all, that the Gadam sorghum that is being so successfully used in beer brewing in Kenya is indeed a selection from the Sudanese variety Gadam El Hamam. And after a quick email to their Sudanese sorghum breeder colleague based in Addis Ababa, we solved the mystery of the name. It turns out the correct transliteration is Gadam Elhmam, which means “Pigeon Foot” in Arabic. This is apparently a trope that is used in Sudanese poetry and songs to describe a beautiful lady. So I more or less had the bits, but I could not put them together. Thanks to all at ICRISAT in Nairobi for helping me do that at last.
Incidentally, the photo is of a beautiful Faidherbia albida tree on the ICRAF campus in Nairobi, which is where the ICRISAT regional office is housed. You may be able to make out from that the Napier grass and mulberries are taller and more lush just under the tree as compared to further back. They don’t call Faidherbia the cornerstone of “evergreen agriculture” (big PDF) for nothing.
Nibbles: Cowpea blogging, Rice vs wheat psychology, IRRI rice breeding, Wheat disease, African ag success, AGRA seed, Seed certification
- Omnibus edition of recent GCP blog posts on cowpea.
- Chinese rice farmers more sharing and caring than wheat farmers.
- Wonder if that will change with all these fancy new rice varieties coming through.
- Wonder if fusarium ear blight of wheat will change that.
- No such problems in Africa, no sirree.
- Not with all these AGRA-supported seed companies taking off.
- But there’s an international component to that which is being neglected.
Micronesian memories
Jonathan Gourlay’s wonderful dissection of his predictably disastrous experience as an outsider running a shop in Micronesia, One Small Store, struck a chord for a number of reasons. First, the great writing. Here’s a sample, chosen from many possibilities:
In Kitti, giant flat basalt stones are still lined up in two rows of three in the center of the feast house, each clanging with its own tone as shirtless men pound stone on stone, mashing up the thick, strong kava (called sakau) for the feast. The musical clacking and clanging of stones begins chaotically and then, as the kava turns gray and viscous, coalesces into one rhythmic song, calling the gods and people to the feast house. You can still join this song. You sit and mash the sakau root with the other sakau pounders around the ancient rock. But you cannot lead the song of the stones. The song just happens, as it has for centuries, when it happens. And when it is complete, you can still drink the sakau. If the sakau is strong, you become the stillest thing in the universe. An observer of life from outside of life. Everything, the ocean, the mango and mangrove trees, the barking dogs, the sweep of time, seems abstract and small because you also feel abstract and small. And perhaps there is a foreigner, a mehn wai, in this group of sakau drinkers. A teacher or a lawyer, someone useful but ultimately unimportant. They are welcome to stay and welcome to leave. What has remained, for hundreds of years, is the clang of the rocks. What has remained, through waves of sailors, missionaries, and invading armies, is the calm of the sakau root sinking into the drinkers, whether they bear a centuries-old title like soum or soulik or souwel or the simple title of mehn wai. They sneak into the ceremony, these interlopers, and they always sneak away again, one way or another.
Then there are the numerous references to the biodiversity of Pohnpei, including of the agricultural kind — such an important part of island life. Kava, as in the extract above, for sure; but also, say, sea cucumbers and betel nut. 1 And, as well, the evocation of how the traditional foods and way of life this biodiversity represents and underpins are being eroded by “things like spam, corned beef, …rice, and something called ‘coco’—a mixture of unripe mango, sugar-free Kool-Aid, and soy sauce.” It all brought back memories of my own time in the region; although thankfully it was not as challenging as Mr Gourlay’s, I think I know how he feels.
And among those memories are many — both happy and painful — of my friend the late Lois Englberger, who worked so hard for the health and nutrition of the people of Pohnpei. For all I know, it was in Mr Gourlay’s very shop that I took this photo, when I visited the island back in 2004. You’ll have to click on it to see it properly, but it’s an example of Lois’ efforts to communicate the evidence that people on the island could improve their nutrition and well being by going back to eating Pohnpei’s unfortunately neglected — and disappearing — orange bananas (and other crop varieties high in Vitamin A precursors, for that matter). That’s ten years ago. Wow. Let me leave you with Lois’ photo of one of the billboards spreading her message on the island, and which Mr Gourlay would, I suspect, find amusing now, if he didn’t then.
