Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

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The politics of toddy

Coconut farmers receive Toddy Movement members released on bail.

That’s the intriguing title of a short piece from Tamil Nadu on the NewKerala.com website. It turns out that dozens of farmers had been thrown in jail a few days ago for tapping coconut toddy without the permission of the state government. The farmers claim that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has reneged on an election promise to rethink the ban on toddy in force in the state. So they started tapping and selling the beverage in their fields in protest. The reaction seemed a bit heavy-handed to me, but apparently toddy is a bit of a political hot potato (as it were) in Tamil Nadu:

In Tamil Nadu, this beverage is currently banned, though the legality fluctuates with politics. In the absence of legal toddy, moonshine distillers of arrack often sell methanol-contaminated alcohol, which can have lethal consequences. To discourage this practice, authorities have pushed for inexpensive “Indian Made Foreign Liquor” (IMFL), much to the dismay of toddy tappers.

Last year the Supreme Court upheld the right of the Tamil Nadu government to prohibit the manufacture, sale and consumption of toddy in the state (there is no ban in other states). The Chief Justice explained the decision in part thus:

“it is a policy decision of the State government. There is no fundamental right to manufacture or trade in liquor. The problem with toddy is it affects ordinary people in villages. Whisky or other liquor is not easily accessible to the common man.”

So that’s allright then. Now, the statement made in an article in The Hindu a few years back about the consequences of the ban for rural livelihoods may be a bit exaggerated:

The Salem district unit of National Agriculturalists Awareness Movement (NAAM) staged a demonstration here on Friday asking the State Government to allow toddy tapping… They said the denial of toddy tapping had ushered in poverty in rural areas.

But toddy must represent a significant contribution to the income of thousands of farming families — and no doubt has done for generations. And the ban may well be contributing to the disappearance of specialized coconut types. Why replant and tend varieties favoured for toddy if you can’t make the stuff?

Go on, Chief Minister Karunanidhi: legalize it!

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DIVERSEEDS puts out DVD

DIVERSEEDS is a scientific project supported fully by the European Commission´s 6th framework programme. We are “Networking on conservation and use of plant genetic resources in Europe and Asia.”

And I think we may have mentioned them before. Anyway, the latest news from the network is that they have a DVD out:

This documentary shows why biodiversity is important for agriculture and how it is conserved and used in many different locations in Europe and Asia.

The DVD costs about US$40, but you can get a discount if you order five or more. I haven’t seen it, so I can’t tell you much more about it. But the contents seems to consist of a series of fifteen or so short (average 3 minutes) films on a wide variety of agrobiodiversity conservation and use initiatives, ranging from the Austrian NGO Arche Noah, to the Thai genebank, to crop wild relatives in the Fertile Crescent, to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. I’ll try to get hold of a copy and report.

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Livestock videos on YouTube

FAO’s Animal Genetic Resources Group has a YouTube channel. The latest addition is “Keepers of Genes — India’s pastoralists and their breeds.”

The League of Pastoral People has teamed up with award-winning documentary filmmakers, Moving Images to produce a series of films on pastoralism. Films have proved a very powerful tool for visually transporting policymakers into the situation of pastoralists. The first film in the series, Keepers of Genes, focuses on the role of pastoralists in conserving biodiversity.

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Depictions of sacred plants in Maya pottery investigated

Hot on the heels of the belated identification of the “penis pepper” depicted on Moche pottery comes more news of ethnobotanical detective work involving plant iconography. Natural historian and archaeologist Charles Zidar of the Missouri Botanical Garden and botanist Wayne Elisens of the University of Oklahoma looked at 2,500 images from southern lowland Maya (Belize, Guatemala and Mexico) ceramics dated to the Classical Period (AD 250 to 900). They focused on depictions of Bombacoideae, “which are easily identified morphologically and have culinary, medicinal, ceremonial, economic, and cosmological significance to the Maya.” Of the ten species present in the area, four or five were found represented on the ceramics.

“I was surprised that a variety of plants from this family were depicted,” says Zidar.

Among them is Ceiba pentandra:

Considered the “first tree”, or “world tree”, the ceiba was thought to stand at the centre of the Earth. Modern indigenous people still often leave the tree alone out of respect when harvesting forest wood.

The thorny trunks of the ceiba tree are represented by ceramic pots used as burial urns or incense holders, which are designed in a strikingly similar fashion.

Investigation of the plant images is continuing, and is being extended to animals. Here’s Zinder again:

By determining what plants were of importance to the ancient Maya, it is my hope that identified plants can be further studied for pharmaceutical, culinary, economic and ceremonial uses. More should be done to conserve large tracts of forest in order to properly study theses plants for their value to mankind.

LATER: By the way, there are some depictions of plants in Mayan art which have yet to be identified.