Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
An article in The Independent a few days ago on daily life in ancient Egypt included this intriguing snippet of information.
Similarly to today perhaps, wine was the booze of choice for high society individuals. Fine wines were labelled with the date, vineyard and variety as the tax assessors requested, such as the ones found in Tutankhamun’s tomb.
I don’t know about you, but I’d love to see a list of ancient Egyptian grape variety names…
The Peruvian National Protected Areas Service has decided to allocate funds to help protect a large swath of the Amazon this year, which is home to several endangered species and indigenous groups.
The Protected Areas Service pledged to allocate USD 280,000 for surveillance activities in the massive area – encompassing a region larger than El Salvador – formed by the Alto Purus National Park and the Purus Communal Reserve. The protected area was officially created in 2004 in part through the support of WWF.
Interesting enough, but when we ran the WWF announcement by our resident expert on the agrobiodiversity of Amazonia, he had this to say:
Lots of unique peanut landraces are known to be cultivated by the Yaminahua — and surely other native groups — that live up in there on the Upper Purus.
It would be interesting to know if the Peruvian National Protected Areas Service’s surveillance activities extend to crop diversity. Maybe someone out there knows?
The No-nonsense Guide to World Food is not just an interesting book by community food activist Wayne Roberts, it’s also a Facebook page. Looks like it could be a good way to learn about the world’s street food trends, among other things. The latest post links to an article on worm-based dishes. Yummie.
Jeremy has just contacted me from London saying that today’s artifact on the BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects series is none other than a Mayan statue of (one of?) the maize god, Hun Hunahpu. ((We’ve blogged about the female version before, who is called Chicomecoatl.))
In Mayan mythology, the maize god was decapitated at harvest time but reborn again at the beginning of a new growing season.
You can read all about it, and listen to the programme, online. I’m sure this will not be the last agrobiodiversity-themed object to be featured on the programme.
