Kenya short of beer

This one really raises more questions than it answers. An article in Kenya’s The Nation newspaper, reprinted by allAfrica.com, says that:

The Government Monday donated traditional crop seeds to farmers as it moved to ensure food security.

So the first question is: seeds of traditional crops or traditional seeds of traditional crops? Ok, probably the former. Then:

The seeds released Thursday were destined for western Kenya which is experiencing poor rains.

Well, western Kenya has experienced poor rains before, and I never heard of such government munificence before. Ah, but:

Production of these crops has declined due to unavailability of planting materials, little interest from seed companies due to low demand and low investment in research.

The crops which do well in dry areas have also been affected by limited knowledge among farmers, change of eating habits and limited knowledge on agro-processing to add value and improve marketability of the crops.

Well, very true, but all that’s been the case for ages. So, probably politics, I guess. Ruto is from the opposition party, and western Kenya is an opposition stronghold, although he’s not from there. No, wait, that’s too cynical, here’s the explanation for the urgency:

“We have been informed that Kenya Breweries Limited require 24,000 tonnes of white sorghum per year for brewing lager. Towards this, we will be distributing over 100 tonnes of white sorghum seeds in 62 districts,” Mr Ruto said.

Anyway, what varieties were used? It would be nice to think that maybe the Genebank of Kenya was involved in sourcing diverse, locally adapted material, but somehow I doubt it.

Italian silk-making

We’ve blogged several times about silk-making in Africa, but this is somewhat closer (at least physically) to home (at least for now). Smithsonian Magazine has a short article on sericulture which includes a reference to a museum devoted to the subject in Como. Turns out that northern Italian city used to be a hub of silk-making. Who knew.

Incidentally, we’ve also blogged about butterfly farming before. And there’s a post just out at mongbay on what they’re doing at the Iwokrama reserve in Guyana. But an article in The Independent describes something altogether more grandiose: “the world’s biggest ‘walkthrough butterfly experience.'”

Drink this

Coco.jpg

I apologise for the quality of this image, but there I was in the local supermarket with only a phone. It shows a shrink-wrapped, cut and trimmed drinking coconut, complete with a straw and instructions for how to make a hole and insert the straw. I was astounded. So astounded that I didn’t register any of the details, like how much these go for, where they are coming from or whether anyone was buying them. If there are any left next time I’ll try to find out. Or maybe this is old news to someone, either in coconut-growing or coconut-drinking country.

Frankincense and disharmonic energy fields

One of the more amazing travel experiences I had when I was working in the Middle East was to drive from Muscat through most of Oman to Salalah, the capital of the province of Dhofar, in the south of the country. You drive on and on for ten and more hours through desert, mile after mile of barren sand and rock. Then you go over a slight rise, and suddenly drop down an escarpment into a lush landscape of thickly forested slopes: the crescent-shaped mountains of Dhofar block the rain-laden clouds of the monsoon for months.

The leaward lip of that escarpment is the home of the frankincense tree, Boswellia sacra, the start of famous trade routes to the Mediterranean and India. And such pleasant recollections were prompted by an article in the NY Times on how frankincense “has the ability to generate this really powerful force field that has been shown to be able to neutralize and transmute what we call disharmonic energy fields.” Right. Let’s hope that New Yorkers’ demand for such force fields doesn’t lead to overexploitation.