Category: Indigenous knowledge systems

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What do you get when you cross a zoo with a seed company foundation?

I’ve no idea, but I’ll be watching this one with interest:

The San Diego Zoo’s Beckman Center for Conservation and Research is teaming teams up with the San Pasqual Band of Mission Indians to create a unique effort sponsored by The Burpee Foundation to restore and revitalize the tribe’s traditional ecological knowledge of native plants and their uses. The partnership, called Burpee’s Native Seeds for Native Americans Program, will join the expertise of scientists from the San Diego Zoo with the experience and knowledge of tribal members, to create outreach efforts that educate and empower tribal youth about their cultural and environmental heritage.

That’s a world class zoo and a world class seed company getting together to use their facilities and expertise to preserve useful plants and the knowledge that goes with them. Too good to be true? I hope not.

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Adapting in the Andes

Climate change is leading to an increase in late blight and other diseases in Andean potato fields, and farmers are moving up the mountain in response. They’re also trying to figure out which of their dozens of varieties — plus others from genebanks, especially CIP’s — are going to do best, where. Hear all about it at NPR. There’s a great slideshow too.

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Out and about: Smithfield Horse Market

This just in from our friend and occasional contributor Danny Hunter out and about in Dublin admiring the agricultural biodiversity on show in a local market.

I walked one minute up the road to the Smithfield Horse Market and was surprised at how big a concern it was. There were horses, ponies and donkeys of all sorts. It was chaotic and pretty much unmanaged. Largely run by and catering for the Traveller community. At one stage there was a bare knuckle fist fight between two brothers apparently. If you missed that you could always go to the van selling videos which had a wide range of DVDs of all sorts of family members, friends and foes slugging it out (among the many road races the Travellers organise in various places). Kids as young as 12 years old were buying and selling! While it is always lovely to be around horses and get some nice shots it all seemed a bit brutal and sad. I liked the scene of the guy with crash helmet and shetland pony walking through the market. After a few hours of sweet fresh horse dung I set off on the Luas for the fresh lungs of Bray and did the 10km coast walk to Greystones.

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Indigo in the Americas

I knew a bit about indigo — but not that in addition to the Old World’s Indigofera tinctoria there’s a separate species in the same genus that was used in ancient America for making dye. I found out because of some interesting detective work on the Maya pigment. I figured that the indigo plant mentioned in the research was something completely different, but it turns out to be I. suffruticosa. Although there do seem to be other genera that produce the colour.

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Seed savers take matters into their own hands

In this global world it can be valuable to stop and think for a moment that we share the same problems and solutions. Traditional knowledge and informal seed systems are not the preserve of “resource-poor farmers in marginal areas in developing countries”. They can be just as vital to fatcat hobby gardeners in the richest countries on earth. Seed swaps, where people exchange their seeds and their knowledge, are now common features of garden life around the developed world, and increasing in frequency and importance as gardeners come to value biodiversity.

All of which is prompted by this fine account of a recent Seedy Saturday from Ottawa Hortiphilia. Check it out, and if anyone else has a report on a seed swap, from Mali, Montreal or Morecombe, let us know.