Mainstream

December 14, 2009December 12, 2009

Turkey making the most of its agrobiodiversity

I’m off for a few weeks’ holiday soon, but I couldn’t go without some reflections on my recent trip to Uzbekistan, via Turkey. I’ll post some photos from the main market in Tashkent later, but in the meantime, here’s a very rapid agrobiodiversity trifecta from a day’s transit in Istanbul.

First, I haven’t been in Turkey for a while, and I don’t remember vişne, or sour cherry, juice been available so readily commercially in cartons a few years back, along with more common staples like orange and apple juice. It’s delicious. Has anyone seen it in Europe?

Secondly, I was intrigued and impressed by the marketing work being done on the hazelnut. Turkish Airlines doesn’t give out peanuts with its drinks. It gives out attractive packets of dry hazelnuts. Again, very tasty, and a nice way of promoting local agrobiodiversity.

hazelnut

And finally, good to see salep, a traditional drink made from ground up orchid bulbs, on sale at the airport, and indeed featured in the in-flight magazine. Great to warm up after a morning wandering around Istanbul in a rainstorm.

December 14, 2009

Oats?

Thanks Nick.

December 8, 2009

Diversity improves waste recycling

The stuff that comes out of olive mills after the oil has been extracted is difficult to deal with. It ought to be a good addition to soils, increasing organic matter and other good qualities. But because it is a rather slimy sludge, it doesn’t decompose well. It is often composed by mixing half and half with sheep litter, and in a recent experiment, grape stems were added too. The result was faster, better compost. Olio, pecorino e grappa. Good for you, good for the land.

December 8, 2009December 8, 2009

Nibbles: Monsanto, Carnival, Recycling, Kelp, Land lease, Pinole

Monsanto under anti-trust investigation in US. h/t Our man in the policy maelstrom, Michael.
Scientia Pro Publica, latest edition.
From the SPP carnival, a recycled doormat saves edible marine biodiversity.
Kelp farming in Maine. h/t Sadie Jane.
“Is there such a thing as Agro-Imperialism?” we’ll let you know when we’ve read this long article. h/t Resilience Science
This is the jerky of the plant kingdom. For those who don’t know, this is the jerky of the animal kingdom.

November 11, 2009November 11, 2009

Do farmers know how to save seeds?

There’s a strange story one hears in various quarters, that small-scale farmers, outside the industrial mainstream, don’t really know how to save their own seeds. We saw it a couple of weeks ago in a comment from Andre, who said that European legislation ensures that “varieties [are] properly maintained and registered and the seed produced according to state-of-the art standards and certified”. The clear implication is that seed produced under any other regime is likely to be defective in some way. I don’t have numbers, of course, but this kind of argument seems to be reasonably common among proponents of high-tech seed breeding. But I was rather surprised to see a somewhat similar argument in a project in the World Bank Development Marketplace, which is busy building to its giddy and exciting conclusion even as I write.

One of the finalists, Helvetas Mozambique, justifies its proposal like this:

“Without access to quality seeds, subsistence farmers practicing rain-fed agriculture continue recycling grain that has been exhausted after generations of cultivation, producing poor yields. …”

To break this cycle, Swiss-based Helvetas proposes what it calls a “zero-emission fridge” consisting of low-cost storage facilities run by community-owned seed banks that “distribute quality seeds of improved crop varieties and serve as a social safety net to benefit 10,000+ rural households”.

What is this notion that grain can become “exhausted after generations of cultivation”? It used to be said of potatoes in Europe, before anyone really understood anything about either sexual reproduction or tuber-borne diseases. And the proof was that if you saved potato fruits and planted true potato seed, the plants were much more vigorous, usually because the seeds did not contain the virus load that plagued seed tubers. Sex reinvigorated the stocks.

Judging from the picture accompanying the piece on the Helvetas proposal, the grain in question is maize. And maize does indeed suffer from inbreeding depression if seeds from too few individuals are saved, but I’m not aware of any evidence that experienced maize farmers don’t understand this. Does Helvetas have evidence that inbreeding depression is a real problem? Or is it, perhaps inadvertently, promoting a view that one reason subsistence farmers don’t have Swiss bank accounts is that they don’t know what they’re doing?