People and baobabs are kinda symbiotic.
More on SRI
Remember the somewhat controversial System of Rice Intensification (SRI)? Well here’s a video of it being taught in farmer field schools in Thailand. The work is being done by the Asian Institute of Technology and Thai Education Foundation on a small grant from the CGIAR Challenge Programme on Water and Food. I found a report on the project from mid-2006, but it seems only preliminary.
Seed Savers video
Following my putting up his video of surfing in the Solomons — with ancillary shots of agrobiodiversity — Tony Jansen has pointed out to me that Seed Savers actually have a video on YouTube that is all about agricultural biodiversity. Here it is.
Indian government to invest in herbs
The Government of India is apparently about to invest Rs 1,000 crore (which i think is Rs 10,000,000,000, something in excess of US$ 250 million, if I’ve got my decimal points right) in herbal medicines over the next five years. The article notes that:
It is a great irony in a country where households pass herbal remedies from one generation to another, and one village to the next, that India accounts for just about 2% of the global herbal drugs market, which is valued at about $63 billion (about Rs2.5 billion). More than 8,000 indigenous medicinal plant species can be found here, but just about 1,000 are commonly traded.
But there’s more. The scheme suggests that collecting medicinal plants will earn poor people more money than cultivating food. Will it earn them enough to buy the food they would have grown? There are plans to train people how best to harvest plants sustainably, and the article talks about a genebank, which sounds more like a database to me.
I have my doubts about the wisdom of massively centralised schemes such as this one, especially when, according to the article, the plan is to convert crop-lands to medicinal plants. Does India really have so much food available that it can afford to divert land from edible crops to medicinal plants, no matter how valuable those plants are? One cannot eat money, or medicinal plants.
Participatory mapping in Africa
An organization called Udongo — which is new to me, although that signifies nothing — reports on a massive mapping exercise in the Mukogodo forest in Kenya. Four different clans of the Yiaku people (some people call them Yaaku) will work with scientists and others to create “a three dimensional model of part of their ancestral lands, showing the Yiaku conception of natural systems of water, forestry, forest products and wildlife. The map helps to create an inventory of indigenous knowledge, natural resources and the intangible heritage of the region.” Then what? “The Yiakku will explore how the 3 D model will be integrated into the future planning processes of the Yiakku and Mukogodo community.”
If you’re listening, Udongo, let us know how it works out, OK?