- Diversity to improve food security in Latin America and the Caribbean.
- Mushroom farming in Kenya.
- Injera eating in Ethiopia.
- A new lentil! Be still my beating heart.
Nibbles: Home Gardens, Seed saving, Apomixis
- Home gardens in Oaxaca, Mexico, conserve diversity and improve resilience. Good to know.
- Seed saving symposium to take place in Hawaii, April 17-18. Good to know.
- Apomixis for plant breeding a step closer in experimental systems. Good to know?
Seed systems and survival
Two recent documents address seed systems in sub-Saharan Africa. One, from the Drylands Coordination Group in Norway looks at the relevance of the informal seed sector to farmers in southern Tigray, Ethiopia, using the famine of 1984 as a boundary across which to compare results. It’s a complex story that would repay study by someone expert in the subject matter, but this is striking:
Five cultivars of sorghum, one cultivar of tef and four cultivars of maize have been lost and others are on the verge of being lost from the farming system of the area. Early maturing sorghum cultivars from the informal seed are gaining upper hand and have already replaced the old but late maturing types.
It is tempting to see those changes as a response to changing weather patterns, and the study recommends research to make older varieties “as productive as they used to be”.
In Zambia, Danielle Nierenberg reports on her blog, the aid charity CARE is fostering a business-like approach to increasing the production of staple crops.
One way they’re doing this is by creating a network of agro-dealers who can sell inputs to their neighbors as well as educate them about how to use hybrid seeds, fertilizers, and other inputs. At the same time, “we are mindful” of the benefits of local varieties of seeds, says Harry Ngoma, Agriculture Advisor for the Consortium for Food Security, Agriculture and Nutrition, AIDS, Resiliency and Markets (C-FAARM).
Right on, Harry! Sounds very like the approach being promoted by AGRA in its pursuit of an African green revolution. And CARE is also promoting indigenous crops such as sorghum to complement Zambia’s appetite for maize. But is there a danger that this network of agro-dealers will be promoting the inputs that make them the most profit? There must be a way of tying rewards for advice to the practical outcome of following that advice.
Nibbles: Genebank, Sorghum, Bamboo
- New genebank! For microbes!! In Gujarat!!!
- Why the sorghum genome is hot.
- Bamboo and the Hmong and bamboo. PAR has a Word document.
Fair deal for rooibos
Before fair trade, small-scale farmers like Hendrik lived close to the breadline as prices for rooibos were squeezed by the market. But fair trade has tripled the farmers’ income. Plus, with the extra money they now get for the tea, Hendrik and his friends can invest in their future, buying their own farming equipment and their own tea court where the raw rooibos leaves are chopped and dried.
“Hendrik” is Hendrik Hesselman, from the Cedarberg region of South Africa. He’s one of 5,000 farmers from Cedarberg who produce the world’s supply of rooibos (or redbush) tea.
Mr Hesselman is a founding member of the 50-plus strong Heiveld Cooperative, which was established in 2003 — with backing from UKaid from the Department for International Development — “to get their tea recognised as Fairtrade, and to get a fair price for it.”
There are also photos, and a video on the community’s attempts to adapt to climate change. One of the things they’re doing is evaluating different “wild types” of rooibos for tolerance of drought conditions. I can’t find any reference to ex situ conservation activities, alas.