My friend Tony Jansen and his friend Jon put together this fun video on the Solomon Islands. It’s ostensibly about surfing, but there’s stuff in there about agricultural biodiversity too. I met Tony when he was working at Kastom Gaden Association, a great local NGO working on sustainable agriculture and nutrition issues. We worked together on the livelihoods assessment of the Weather Coast of Guadalcanal.
Agrobiodiversity trade route could attract tourists
Travel the Frankincense Route. Three Wise Men unavailable for comment.
Farmers save seeds shock
A farm in Massachusetts, US, has launched its own seed bank. Red Gate Farm Seed Bank aims to:
- provide community access to quality, local seeds.
- preserve local, heritage and heirloom seed varieties.
- promote seed saving.
- develop and distribute seeds that are optimum for our unique New England soils and climate.
- collect the social histories of our local seeds.
And very worthy that is too. You can do that sort of thing in nasty quasi-dictatorial America. In freedom-loving, liberal ol’ Yurp it would be illegal.
via Grist, which adds that “with a climate on the fritz, indigenous seeds will likely play an increasingly important role in sustaining local agricultureâ€. Except, of course, that it won’t be indigenous seeds that will support local agriculture. It’ll be agricultural biodiversity from far away, adapted to a different climate.
The growing fields
From a comment here I found my way to mandevu.net and the latest post there on how farmers in Cambodia cope with unexpected conditions, complete with video. What happened was that the floods came early to the village. That destroyed most of the rice crop. So how did the villagers cope? Well, in many ways, all of which involve the careful management of rice agricultural biodiversity. But I’m not going to steal mandevu’s thunder. Go there and see for yourself.
By the way, mandevu notes he has three readers. Well, we have five or six. And I’m happy to try and send a couple his way for first hand reports from the field. We’d do that for anyone with as much interesting material. Just point it out.
It’s good for you, mate
I’ve tasted mate tea, made from the herb Ilex paraguariensis, and I have to say it is a mystery to me how so many Argentinians (and others) could be totally hooked on the stuff. Maybe because they knew all along it was so good for them. ((A comprehensive review was published in the Journal of food Science.)) Now science agrees. Elvira de Majia, of the University of Illinois, discovered that mate drinkers in her lab had greater activity in an enzyme that increases HDL (good) cholesterol while lowering LDL (bad) cholesterol. On that basis, and mate’s many other health benefits, she secured a deal with Argentina to study in detail 84 different varieties of mate, including wild populations. According to the press release:
“Our studies show that some of the most important antioxidant enzymes in the body are induced by this herbal tea,†said de Mejia of her study in September’s Planta Medica. ((Which is here, but you need to be a subscriber.))
“Because Argentina has the different mate varieties, we’ll be able to do more comparisons and characterizations between the different genotypes and the benefits of different growing conditions—whether in sun (on a plantation) or in shade (under the rainforest canopy),†she added.
There’s also interest in adding the active ingredient(s) to processed food. There always is.