Category: Neglected species

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Amaranth across the Rio Grande

A quick follow up to my very telegraphic postscript to a post a few days back. I was listening to an AgTalks session on “forgotten food crops” from IFAD, and I was quite surprised to hear from Mary M. Delano Frier, one of the excellent speakers, that when she started her work on amaranth in Mexico, she had to get material from the USDA genebank.

So I contacted David Brenner, who curates the amaranth collection at the Plant Introduction Station at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. This is what he said:

We send substantial amaranth germplasm to Mexico and we have large holdings of Mexican amaranths that we distribute worldwide. There is at least one other organization (Puente) in Mexico with a parallel mission to Mary Delano Frier’s. They are both solving issues of food sovereignty and poverty by restoring amaranth to poor villages. We have sent germplasm to both. There are also organizations in East Africa with a similar mission, although grain amaranths are newer in Africa. Mary Delano Frier attends some of the Amaranth Institute meetings where I have met her. Her brother John Delano Frier has published research on amaranth done in Mexico with our germplasm. Amaranth enthusiasts from these and other perspectives get to together at the Amaranth Institute meetings which are built on contacts I get from distributing germplasm. The Amaranth Institute folks are very encouraging to me as a curator. I think these days amaranth projects in Mexico can start up with germplasm from older project and from the INIFAP genebank under Dr. Espitia, which is investing in amaranth. There are also skilled agronomists to advise growers in Mexico.

A great example of international collaboration. No walls or other impediments to exchange of germplasm between the US and Mexico.

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For royalty or for all?

You still have time to arrange to listen to the AgTalks session on “forgotten food crops,” from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post.

AgTalks presents the latest thinking, trends and research on policies and innovation in small-scale farming. This session, titled “For royalty or for all? Amaranth, teff, millet and cassava,” is intended to raise awareness about forgotten food crops that were once central to people’s diet centuries ago. These lost crops have huge nutritional value and economic potential, just waiting to be rediscovered.

The webcast is just waiting to be discovered on the IFAD website. It starts in about half an hour…

LATER: And thanks to the organizers (IFAD) for taking my question over Twitter. Fascinating to hear from Mary M. Delano Frier that when she started her work in Mexico using amaranth to improve kids’ nutrition in schools, she had to get material from the USA genebank. That’s now changed, apparently.

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Brainfood: IPR in breeding, Cryo costs, Undervalued spp, Biodiversity change drivers, Cassava proteins, Sorghum seed sources

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How to get over your quinoa guilt trip, kinda

We’ve poked fun in the past at people who think that high prices for quinoa are taking food out of the mouths of poor farmers in Bolivia and Peru, but here’s a confession.

We didn’t have actual objective evidence that this was not the case. Just a gut feeling, based on experience and knowing people who know quinoa farmers. Oh, and lots of research on other commodities by Nobel prize winner Angus Deaton.

Now we do have evidence, from real agricultural economists, which I’ve written about at length (and thanks for giving me the length) at NPR’s The Salt.

Your Quinoa Habit Really Did Help Peru’s Poor. But There’s Trouble Ahead.

Bottom line, from the researchers:

“The claim that rising quinoa prices were hurting those who had traditionally produced and consumed it [is] patently false.”

And that goes for nutrition too, as the article explains.

So what’s the trouble ahead? There are three, actually, two of which will be familiar to readers of this site.

First, the boom in export markets is focussed on very few of the 3000 or so extant varieties of quinoa, which hold the future to further adaptation of quinoa as environmental conditions change. Payments for Agrobiodiversity Conservation Services could help to solve that.

Secondly, the sustainability of quinoa growing in the high Andes is in doubt because more intensive practices are resulting in soil erosion and degradation. No easy solution, unless the farmers band together and implement some minimum sustainability standards. That might give them an edge in an increasingly competitive market, the basis for confronting perhaps the biggest threat …

Prices have already started to drop, and are already well down on their peak. That’s hardly surprising. High prices have sucked in global competitors. Farmers in South America are holding on to their stocks in the hope that prices will rise again, but few of the people I spoke to have any expectation that they will rise.

As Marc Bellemare, one of the agricultural economists, told me:

“If we’re going to rejoice when prices go up, maybe we should worry when prices go down.”

A quick, selective trawl in our archives produces: