Nibbles: Chickens, Realpolitik, Apples, Kew, Maize, Local food

Cassava rules

The IITA public awareness machine must be in overdrive, and it looks like it’s running on cassava. Today

  1. a cassava mosaic project got a namecheck in the Sunday Tribune,
  2. news of a newly released drought tolerant variety got picked up in African Science News Service, and
  3. a meeting on value addition got an article in the wonderfully-named Daily Triumph.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s about time cassava got the attention it deserves in Africa.

Pickled olives

During my recent trip to Syria I visited the world’s largest restaurant. I thought that was really cool and I wanted to at least mention it here, but could think of no excuse until a couple of stories appeared about a Middle Eastern food staple appeared in the news and I could resist no longer. I wonder how many olives the Bawabet Dimash needs to haul in every day to supply its 6,014 tables. Olive cultivation has really been booming in Syria during the past 20 years, expanding into large areas that were formerly little more than rocky pastures. I saw some huge newish plantations around Aleppo, for example. There are lots of different varieties in Syria, but I got the feeling that only one or two account for most of the expansion. These areas are likely to get drier with climate change, so I don’t know how sustainable the expansion is.

Meanwhile, further south, the olive harvest in the West Bank is being affected by some very unpleasant incidents. The olive is a mainstay of what remains of the Palestinian economy, and this is bound to impact people’s already sorely stressed livelihoods. I suspect not much of the West Bank’s production in currently being exported, but if and when it does start being marketed in Europe, it will have to cope with some sharp-nosed Italian police officers.