- Australians justify their investment in IRRI. Now that’s what I call impact!
- Peruvian cuisine takes over the world. But, as Eve points out elsewhere, “We have a thousand kinds of potatoes in Peru, thousands” is not hyperbole.
- Jess scoops the world with a nutrition strategy for the masses.
- Indians need sorghum and millets to keep healthy.
- Ethnobiology: The Book.
- Talking about street food. Hold the mayo.
- Not all pigs are cloven-hoofed. A tetrapod zoologist explains syndactyly.
- Polyculture; is it all Pollyanna? Science will answer.
- A flavour map of British cheeses. You know you need it.
- Foraging for pawpaws. Not those pawpaws.
- Bird areas apps. CWRs next?
Sorghum and ethnicity in Africa
Ever since I contributed to A methodological model for ecogeographic surveys of crops, and suggested that collectors should do this, I’ve been waiting for the time when it would be easy — or even possible — to map the distribution of conserved germplasm on top of cultural, ethnic or language boundaries. The problem has been that maps of such boundaries, 1 though available in various printed formats, have not been much digitized. Or at least I hadn’t come across them. Until I happened on a blog post about the Center for Geographic Analysis’ (Harvard University) WorldMap, an open source web mapping system. The layers provided include one called Ethnicity Felix 2001, which “consist of polygons and labels depicting ethnicity information based on the ‘People’s Atlas of Africa’ by Marc Felix and Charles Meur, Copyright 2001.” Perfect, I thought.
Nibbles: Collecting, US heirlooms, Sequencing NUS, Nutrition strategies, Potatoes and climate change, Italian genetics
- NSF re-invents the genebank wheel. No, that’s unfair, they’ve given much-needed money to evolutionary scientists to go out and collect seeds of 34 species in a really pernickety way.
- Heirlooms being lost (maybe) and being re-found in the US. Thanks to Eve (on FB) for both.
- A Cape tomato by any other name…
- Gates Foundation has a new nutrition strategy. Gotta admire the chutzpah of summarizing the thing in basically half a side of A4. Compare and contrast, both as to content and presentation, with the CGIAR. Unfair again, I know, but that’s the kind of mood I’m in. Jess unavailable for comment.
- Very complicated, very pretty maps about potatoes and climate change.
- “I failed to notice substantial contributions to discussions or presentations from breeders or seed organizations, the end users of so much of the research discussed.” Pat Heslop Harrison calls ’em like he seems ’em.
Nibbles: Polyculture, Melons, Cheese 2011, Australian medicinals
- Do polycultures have a role in modern agriculture? Well, do they? h/t The Scientist Gardener.
- Texas breeders go for better melons.
- “Children from the city who try this yogurt don’t like it, but they’re not healthy like my children!”
- Hotspots for Aboriginal traditional medicinal plants mapped to within an inch of their lives, thanks to GBIF.
The price of hoes in Kenya
This post is not really about agricultural biodiversity, but I think it is worth stretching a point on some occasions. Take a look at the caption for this photograph. It’s the last in a gallery from The Guardian which goes with a nice write-up of what sounds like a very worthy Farm Africa project.
Forty-five pounds for a hoe? Forty-five pounds? I must say I’d missed that when I first went through the photos, but when Jeremy pointed it out I had to admit that seemed a bit steep for a hoe.
Well, is it just us? What do we know about the price of hoes in Kenya, right? Internal evidence in the article suggests that £45 is a lot of money, but a fair price for a hoe.
But low-tech can still be costly. Mwanza says she would like more hoes, but at £45 a hoe, it is far more than she can afford. The simple brick house she lives in with one of her children is no bigger than a small bedroom.
But googling comes up with a much cheaper price in Uganda:
“A hoe is a very cheap thing. It costs Shs 7,500 each and when I buy one it can last more than two years,” Nyakoojo said.
That would be about £1.70. And when the wife sent text messages to everyone she could think of in Kenya she got back figures closer to the Ugandan than The Guardian. A very fancy hoe goes for about KSh 1,200, or £8, we were told.
So what’s going on? Normally, I’d probably just dismiss it as a misplaced decimal point somewhere. Or perhaps a misunderstanding about what exactly the tool involved is. But it appears that this “hoe” is the weapon of choice in the Manichean fight against GMOs.
Small African farmers such as Mwanza stand on the frontline in the battle for higher productivity and agricultural development, a struggle being fought not with tractors and GM crops but with hoes, wheelbarrows and indigenous drought-resistant crops: cowpeas, pigeon peas, green grams, sorghum and millet.
So I think we should all be extra clear about what one costs. Starting with The Guardian. And the Gates Foundation.