A traditional narcotic shrub is taking over Yemeni agriculture.
Farming butterflies conserves forests
East African farmers are making good money — and conserving their local surroundings — by going after butterflies. The Manila Times picks up a story from Agence France Presse reporting from the villages in Kenya and Tanzania where locals have learned how to trade in butterflies. The article is built on the words of the farmers themselves, and it makes for uplifting reading. A sample:
“I would be foolish to cut trees,†says Suleiman Kachuma, a 42-year-old villager, who earns between 15 and 23 dollars a month from his work with Kipepeo, double what he used to make selling timber.
“Before, people had a few chickens and goats… Now there is a big change. Farmers have more chickens, some even have some cattle. The project really changed our lives,†he says.
I thought I’d seen this somewhere before, and I had.
Cow vs goat milk
We’ve blogged before about how goat’s milk is more digestible than cow’s milk, but makes cheese which is lower in beta carotene. Now it turns out that goat’s milk has “higher bioavailability of iron, calcium, phosphorus and magnesium.” Goat’s milk has about 2% of the market. ((In the UK.)) Got (goat’s) milk?
Youth farmstands in the Garden State
Rutgers University’s New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station has something called a Youth Farmstand Program. Farmstands — market stalls selling local produce, often organically grown — offer “a hands-on entrepreneurial experience to youth in the mechanics of owning and operating a small business, based on the premise that experience really is the best teacher.” They also provide “a unifying framework for youth, farmers & communities to achieve success. Each needs the others’ support to grow and prosper, so everyone wins!” Sounds like a great idea to promote agricultural biodiversity, better nutrition and youth development all at the same time.
Legalize it?
We’ve blogged before about poppy-growing in Afghanistan. We have here a well-adapted, traditional crop whose cultivation is being — let us say — actively discouraged in its place of origin and highest diversity because of the illicit trade in its product. Meanwhile, the large legal demand for the product is serviced — but by no means fully met — by countries which are much better off and have lots of other options. Legalization and regulation, possibly combined with new varieties with a truncated biosynthetic pathway for morphine, would seem to be an attractive option, at least worth exploring.
Well, a long piece in the website of the US Department of State says no, emphatically. It seems that:
- the licit market is not lucrative enough
- there is not sufficient world demand
- regulation is not feasible in Afghanistan
- past experience in other countries is not encouraging, and
- legalization is conterproductive anyway
Even the technological fix is no such thing, apparently. My first thought is that if all the money being poured into interdiction was directed at establishing a regulatory framework, and perhaps even providing subsidies, the whole thing might not perhaps seem so hopeless. Also, if historical experience of legalization is not particularly encouraging, is the experience of prohibition any more so? But it would definitely be worth getting to the bottom of whether there is a worldwide shortage of medical opiates or not. Anyway, see what you think.