Category: Information

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Talking about prairie restoration

“Not long ago, it was assumed that once a prairie was plowed up for row crop agriculture, there was no way to get the plant and animal species back again,” said Chris Helzer of The Nature Conservancy. “But now we’ve got the technology and experience to successfully harvest and plant seeds from hundreds of plant species. So in cases where it makes sense to do that kind of restoration, we can re-establish that diverse plant community.”

And that, as we’ve seen, includes a whole bunch of crop wild relatives. Wonder if the folks talking about this in Aurora, NE will give them their due. In fact, I wonder if restoration ecologists in general give any sort of special consideration to CWRs in their work. If you know, tell us.

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Indigenous food systems documented

FAO has a book out called Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems, published with the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE). There’s an informative interview with Barbara Burlingame, senior nutrition officer at FAO and coordinator for the book, on the FAO InTouch website. Unfortunately, this is only available internally at FAO, for reasons which elude me. Here’s a few of the interesting things Dr Burlingame had to say.

We wanted to showcase the many dimensions of these traditional food resources, breaking them down by nutrition, health, culture and environmental sustainability. So much knowledge of early cultures is contained within traditional foods and their cultivation, and they have a direct impact on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health of indigenous communities. Indigenous foods can have important nutritional benefits, for example. For instance plant foods are generally viewed as good sources of carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. These foods also provide important economic benefits, such as helping create self-sufficient communities and establishing a strong foundation of food security.
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We believe the information can be a help to those in nutrition, agriculture, environmental and health education, and science, including policymakers. Nutritionists can use the information to try and correct imbalances in certain regions. For example, we discovered in research that the Pohnpei district community in the Federated States of Micronesia was severely deficient in vitamin A, despite the fact that a species of banana rich in vitamin A beta-carotenes was indigenous to the region. Once we determined the nutritional composition of the banana, we were able to educate the people about its benefit and encourage them to eat the local fruit, which helped reverse the deficiency.
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Yes, another book is under way that focuses more on nutrition and public health. It will look at policy dimensions, stemming the tide of obesity in indigenous peoples, the value of indigenous weaning foods for babies, and a ‘go local’ campaign in Micronesia encouraging communities to eat local food items. We will also continue in our efforts in integrating elements of biodiversity into all aspects of nutrition.

“Go Local” of course refers to the campaign to promote traditional foods in the Pacific spearheaded by Lois Englberger and her colleagues at the Island Food Community of Pohnpei, who have appeared frequently on these pages. It’s great to see my old friends from the Pacific getting this kind of international exposure for their efforts, and making a difference beyond their immediate region.

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Online discussion on traditional practices

The Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition is a forum “whose members share experiences, identify resources, provide peer coaching and support and find collective solutions to food security and nutrition (FSN) issues, focusing on FSN policies”. The latest discussion is called Looking back to effective rural practices … Did we miss something? and runs for three weeks from yesterday. I culled this from the host’s welcome document:

My name is Walter Mwasaa I am a relief aid worker with specific interest in food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, having worked in Somalia and currently in Sierra Leone.

I am often challenged by the widespread food shortages and livelihood insecurity in rural areas. Talking to the local populations in Sierra Leone, Somalia and Kenya, there are often recalls of times gone by when the same communities were able to provide enough for themselves.

I am doing a research project Kenya on changing livelihoods looking back at how the changes in food production and people’s way of earning incomes have evolved with a special interest in what could have been carried forward to ensure self-sufficiency.

It is certain that communities are practising modern systems of production that are geared to producing more food and improved living standards. I am however at a loss in looking at how many communities are still unable to produce sufficient food. Policies and structural systems are partly responsible for the situation.

Walter is inviting input, among other things, to see whether in the rush to embrace the future, we may be forgetting good things from the past, like the importance of agricultural biodiversity.

Maybe you have something to contribute. And maybe you, or someone else, could be willing to summarise the discussion back here? There’s a slightly cumbersome procedure for registering — you do so from the FSN home page — and I’ve no idea how the forum actually works, but we shall see.