- The Ethicurean digs into agretti (Salsola soda).
- Pavlovsk in the St Petersburg Times …
- … and in the Sydney Morning Herald.
- Conference in November: Nutrition Security in the Developing World ABD?.
- CIAT’s library showcases nutrition.
- More on turkey domestication.
Nibbles: Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Pavlovsk, Fun fungus, ALVs, Breadfruit
- Best round up yet of what’s happening at Pavlovsk Experiment Station.
- Nature’s report on Pavlovsk is good too.
- Pavlovsk making waves in India too. S.Ananthanarayanan shares a write-up in The Statesman, Kolkata.
- More on that Chinese insect-eating fungus, or Chinese Love Flower. Yuck.
- A one-woman crusade for traditional African leafy vegetables. Right.
- Breadfruit trees in Jamaica. From the Trees that Feed Foundation, a new one on me.
Nibbles: More khat, Rice
- The Leaf of Allah.
- Japan invests US$6 million in rice research in Uganda.
Nibbles: FARA, Khat, Pepsi in Peru
- Another blog about FARA’s 2010 meeting, this post features our friend Ehsan Dulloo. (Where’s an aggregator when you need one?)
- Mikrokhan masticates the khat economy. Would it really not grow locally?
- PepsiCo invests USD3 million over 3 years in Peruvian potatoes. Why not use CIP?
How would you promote agricultural biodiversity?
Here’s the scenario: the civic authorities have decided to install a home garden somewhere in the centre of the city. This is in a country with a very conservative attitude to its food culture, where tradition runs deep (although not as deep as to recognize that several staples of the cuisine arrived as interlopers from other lands, roughly 500 years ago.) And because your organization is based in that same city, and has a reputation for knowing about agricultural biodiversity and home gardens, the authorities have asked you to contribute in some way.
You don’t exactly know why the civic authorities are constructing the garden, although you suspect it has something to do with being seen to be green, to care about food and about diversity. And you don’t know what they want, either, or what kind of experience they are planning to offer the visiting public. A gawp at vegetables in the ground rather than in plastic? Surely not. The country hasn’t lost its agrarian roots that completely. Edumacashun? Yeah, but what is the message? You also don’t know what they want. Advice? Expertise? Something to give to visitors?
So you decide to offer them plants that might be found in a home garden far away, specifically, the nutritious African leafy vegetables that you’ve been promoting for better health, incomes and environmental sustainability. But you fear that the civic authorities might not be too keen. You fear they are likely to say something like: “Why should we plant your strange African vegetables in a garden here? What’s the point?”
What one, killer argument would you offer to persuade them?