Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

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Nordic chefs exploring Nordic foods with Nordic genebank

I was intrigued by a reference to a genebank in a restaurant review in the Wall Street Journal. Not just any restaurant, but the best restaurant in the world, Noma in Copenhagen, which is “is best known for its fanatical approach to foraging.” Here’s the reference:

Noma helped found a Nordic Food Lab, which has a gene bank that is collating information about the wild products in the region.

Nordic Food Lab does indeed sound interesting (especially its fermentation trials):

Nordic Food Lab is a non-profit self-governed institution established by head chef of Noma, Rene Redzepi and gastronomic entrepreneur, Claus Meyer with the purpose of scientifically exploring the New Nordic Cuisine and disseminating results from this exploration.

But they’re not really establishing a genebank, as suggested by the WSJ piece.

We are collaborating with Nordgen, the amazing bank of genetic material, to evaluate the gastronomic potential of bygone varieties of Scandinavian produce. We will publish our sensory evaluations as they are completed. This promises to be an extremely interesting project; many modern species are produced on other merits besides flavor, and we expect intriguing findings.

Much more sensible.

The entrance to NordGen (Nordic Genetic Resource Center) at Alnarp.
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Bananas on TV and the blogosphere

In Africa, political parties must stop using real banana leaves as their symbol at rallies or on buses…

Why? Pat Heslop-Harrison explains the reason, and much more, in a great new post at AoB Blog. The occasion is the 13 May edition of the BBC TV programme The One Show, which included an interview with Dr Heslop-Harrison by journalist, food critic and TV personality Jay Rayner. With links to a couple of freely available Annals of Botany papers and a presentation too.

LATER: Let’s not forget the importance of banana for brewing beer in parts of Africa.

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Brainfood: Australian obesity, Pigeonpea blight, Chocolate spot, Agroforestry, Andean potato agriculture, Salinity tolerance, Tree migration, Tea

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The latest on the Haitian seed donation controversy

You may remember a number of posts we did last year on the Monsanto donation of maize and vegetable seed to Haiti in the wake of the earthquake, and what Catholic Relief Services and others thought about it, which was, in a nutshell, not much. Now, via Truthout, comes news of an investigation by Haiti Grassroots Watch of what happened to the seed. The article also usefully recounts the whole story. And there’s a summary, with added video goodness. These three points from the summary probably best describe where Haiti Grassroots Watch are coming from:

  • At least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting “hooked” on hybrid seeds. (Most Haitian farmers select seeds from their own harvests.) One of the USAID/WINNER trained extension agents told Haiti Grassroots Watch that in his region, farmers won’t need to save seeds anymore: “They don’t have to kill themselves like before. They can plant, harvest, sell or eat. They don’t have to save seeds anymore because they know they will get seeds from the [WINNER-subsidized] store.” When it was pointed out that WINNER’s subsidies end when the project ends (in four years), he had no logical response.
  • At least some of the farmer groups interviewed also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids. In at least one location, it is quite possible farmers plant seed without the use of recommended gloves, masks and other protections, and – until Haiti Grassroots Watch intervened – they were planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.
  • In at least several places around the country, donated seeds produced no or little yield. “What I would like to tell the NGOs it that, just because we are the poorest country doesn’t mean they should give us whatever, whenever,” disgruntled Bainet farmer Jean Robert Cadichon told Haiti Grassroots Watch.

    • But, as a pithy encapsulation of the Haitian seed donation conundrum, I liked this comment from an interviewee:

    “We love Monsanto seeds,” Farmer said again. Although he noted that the bigger kernels don’t always fit in farmers’ corn mills.

    Farmers! Always wanting more.