“A shared love of okra can unite us.” Col. Sanders unavailable for comment.
“Sensually mapping the world”
An article by Andrew Jefford over at the Financial Times’ Food and Drink section dissects the concept of “appellations d’origine controlée.” This refers to a system which provides legal protection for a name of an agricultural product made in a particular way in a particular place. Thus, champagne is not just any old sparkling wine, but, “wine produced by a special method, from pinot noir, pinot meunier and chardonnay grapes grown in a circumscribed region of France lying east of Paris.”
The article is a great read. Here’s a longer sample, to give you the — as it were — flavour:
Thanks to the efforts of some 250 local growers with 9,000 ha of meadows irrigated by the river Durance via an intricate series of canals in place since the late 17th century, even hay from the stony Crau plain achieved certification, in 1997, to protect and expand the reputation of this uniquely sweet, nutritious animal feed; only these growers have the right to tie their bales with a distinctive red and white twine. The hay is cut three times every summer, the first cut being ideal for horses and beef cattle, the second cut for dairy cattle and milking ewes, and the third for sheep and goats… Appellations are a way of sensually mapping the world.
Beer diversity
There are 125 different styles of beer. I just need a cold one.
Farmer Field Schools in the Pacific and beyond
Danny Hunter has sent us this contribution. Until recently, Danny ran the TaroGen and DSAP projects at the Secretariat of the Pacific Community in Fiji. Thanks, Danny.
An interesting article from SciDevNet about farmer empowerment through Farmer Field Schools (FFS) reminded me of a great little programme that we had running in Samoa in the late nineties. Farmer Field Schools began as a training and extension approach for integrated pest management of rice, largely supported by FAO in Asia. Since then FFS have been used for a variety of agricultural crops, systems and problems, including livestock, and have spread to other regions of the world.
The article prompted me to reflect on earlier efforts that we made at the Alafua Campus of the University of the South Pacific in Samoa, using similar “field-based” approaches to help students and farmers (as well as researchers and extensionists!) learn about taro diversity and improvement. In 1993 Samoa was devastated by an outbreak of taro leaf blight. Initial responses using pesticides and cultural methods were futile and while introduced “resistant” varieties helped, the disease was still a major problem.
Continue reading “Farmer Field Schools in the Pacific and beyond”
Summer-grass winter-worm
We went to the opening of a new exhibit at the Bioparco di Roma called Bioversitalia last night. The exhibit was fine, although as usual agricultural biodiversity got short-changed a bit, and so was the food on offer. The introductory talk, however, was a thorough disappointment. Not at all inspiring. What the boffins on display should have talked about, perhaps, is things like Cordyceps sinensis, aka དབྱར་རྩྭ་དགུན་འབུ་, aka the “summer-grass winter-worm.”
The summer-grass winter-worm is a parasitic fungus from Tibet which attacks and takes over the bodies of moth larvae living in the soil. Livestock really like to eat the resulting worm-like mummies, which are also used in traditional medicine. They’re a really valuable commodity: what alerted me to their existence was a newspaper piece today about a fatal gun battle that exploded when neighbouring villages clashed over access to this resource.
Now, it is stories such as this one of the medicinal moth-mummifying fungus of Tibet that would really have got people excited in the Bioparco last night about the wonder and importance of biodiversity!