So, let’s recap. Rebuilding Haitian agriculture will need agroforestry, permaculture, biotech bananas, high-end rum, and specialty coffees. No, that’s unduly flippant. The diversity of ideas is actually rather encouraging.
Nibbles: Rum, Gluten, Nepal, Fruit
- A rum story from Haiti. And another, though a different sort of rum.
- Quinoa and buckwheat best for coeliacs.
- Video of food crisis in Nepal. In other news, there’s a food crisis in Nepal.
- Forest fruits need markets too.
Three good ideas
I think I have already pointed out that Nigel Chaffey does an entertaining round-up of botanically themed items from the world’s media on every issue of Annals of Botany. The latest one has three stories — on training, innovation and information — of great relevance to some of our recurring obsessions here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.
- “Teaching Tools in Plant Biology is a new, online feature of The Plant Cell consisting of materials to help instructors teach plant biology courses. Each topic includes a short essay introducing the topic, with suggested further readings, and a PowerPoint lecture with handouts. The materials are peer reviewed by leaders in the field to ensure accuracy, like all material in The Plant Cell.” Anyone want to volunteer to do one on agrobiodiversity conservation?
- InnoCentive, the global innovation marketplace, “where creative minds solve some of the world’s most important problems for cash awards up to $1 million,” is to tackle the problem of the European corn borer, though the solvers of this one get only $20,000, and must relinquish all intellectual property rights. Will be interesting to see if anyone bites. The deadline for submission just passed.
- Annals of Botany is going to take part in a project “to establish whether content in various formats from disparate sources (e.g. literature from publishers and data from public databases) can be delivered to a central ‘knowledge brokering service’, which then makes the content machine-readable and allows key pieces of information to be extracted by data-mining approaches.” I really like this idea as a way of aggregating information on germplasm accessions, data from databases but also published results from papers etc.
Geographical indications to preserve Ethiopia’s biodiversity
From André Heitz.
Ethiopia is one of the frontrunners in the use of Intellectual Property to make the best use of its plant genetic and traditional knowledge assets. In the absence of legislation on geographical indications, it has endeavoured to use collective trade marks in the main export markets to add value to its Sidamo, Yirgacheffe, and Harrar/Harar coffees. There is more on the Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative at the Ethiopian Coffee Network and Light Years IP.
The Ethiopian Parliament is now expected to pass geographical indications legislation later this year. This will then provide the legal basis for Ethiopia’s plans to register geographical indications protection, first nationally and then abroad, over emblematic home garden products like coffee, beans, spices and condiments or aromatic plants.
The Home Gardens of Ethiopia project says:
Biodiversity is under threat everywhere, and Ethiopia is no exception.
This country features an exceptional biodiversity, and its gardens, shaped generation after generation by rural populations, represent a unique natural and cultural heritage that must be handed down to future generations.
To preserve this horticultural heritage, Ethiopia has chosen to design and implement an effective institutional and promotional tool: a Geographical Indications system.
The “Home Gardens of Ethiopia” project seeks to promote and develop native horticultural productions, while preserving in situ the biodiversity of the country’s gardens. Its approach is both original and efficient: to offer farmers communities legal protection and help them promote selected native products with new marketing opportunities. Ethiopian farmers will be able to make their traditional modes of production more sustainable, and preserve the biodiversity of which they are the custodians.
We’ll keep fingers crossed.
Vote for your favourite nutrition innovation
The finalists of the Improved Nutrition Solutions Through Innovation competition are up on Ashoka’s Changemakers site. One project promises that a “native rainforest food for school lunches improves child health while motivating reforestation.” And another wants to produce nutritional supplements from Moringa. It may not be enormously innovative, but I personally like Gardens for Health best, because it has the least of the silver bullet about it, and the most agrobiodiversity.
Gardens for Health enables people living with HIV/AIDS to improve their nutrition, health, and treatment adherence through sustainable agriculture. GHI provides access to land and patient capital for community gardens, seeds and tree seedlings for family home gardens, technical assistance in sustainable agriculture and nutrition, and market linkages
Go vote. You have until 8 February.