BBC Radio 4 has one of the longest-lived series devoted to all aspects of food: The Food Programme. Today’s broadcast looked at the importance of traditional African vegetables and fruits in nutrition, health, and offering farmers additional options for earning a better living. The programme rounded up many of the usual suspects from among our friends at Bioversity International, to very good effect. At least, that’s our opinion, and we’re sticking with it. Programme details are available at the Food Programme’s web site, which also has links that let you listen online. We’re hoping the episode will go into the archive, in which case we’ll post a link to that here. If not, well, there are other options …
Development and entrepreneurship in Africa
The company is just one part of Wade’s “comprehensive plan for Africa,” an anti-aid alternative to the Jeffrey Sachs vision.
A fascinating quote from a fascinating article on the Freakonomics blog, about three entrepreneurs in Africa. The woman whose quote I extracted above is Magatte Wade, and she’s the reason the story deserves a mention here. Her company — Adina for Life — came into being when she returned home to Senegal “and was disappointed to find that the traditional hibiscus drink of her childhood had been usurped by Western soft drinks”.
Hibiscus drinks are indeed a constant in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and hibiscus has been the focus of efforts to improve livelihoods by capitalizing on its popularity. Adina seems to be in a state of turmoil at the moment — with its US outlets suffering a crisis of identity and Wade apparently no longer associated with the company, at least in the US. But the larger point, that it is possible for Africans to make better use of their own natural resources remains valuable, and the other two stories in the Freakonomics story amplify that.
I wonder, though. Adina plunged into the cut-throat soft drinks market of the US. Why, when the stated goal was to replace sticky soft drinks in the home market? Wouldn’t that be enough?
Nibbles: Chicory symbolism, Watermelon disease, Olive documentation, Camassia quamash, Pig maps
- Chicory averts evil. Gotta get me some.
- Genebank watermelon material reveals sources of resistance to WVD caused by SqVYV. What?
- Israelis, Palestinians and Germans collaborate on DNA fingerprinting and quality evaluation of olive trees. Wait, what? Scroll down.
- Genetic structure of Native American food plant not really affected by Native Americans. This is the bulb that kept Lewis & Clark alive, apparently.
- Tracing Paper compares hog distribution in 1922 and now, finds little difference.
Nibbles: Svalbard, Consumers, Seed law, Fragrant rice, Five Farms on radio, Invasive plant used, Genetic diversity and latitude, Coffee and tea in history, Coconut disease
- “Sustainable food production may not begin in this cold Arctic environment, but it does begin by conserving crop diversity.” Words of wisdom from the frozen lips of Ban Ki Moon.
- Organic vs local. A survey.
- Civil Society opposes seed laws in Chile.
- Jeremy gets stuck into a bowl of basmati and Five Farms.
- “Pest to pesto.”
- Tropical fruit flies have less genetic diversity than temperate fruit flies, may have trouble adapting to climate change.
- “It is difficult to imagine what the first taste of sugar or coffee must have been like to those accustomed to weak beer and bread.”
- Lethal yellowing spreads in Ghana?
Nibbles: Exotics, Spinach
- Are exotic vegetables worth the trouble? Well, who says they’re exotic?
- The 5,000 people who die every year of food-borne illness aren’t dying from my spinach. Well, who says they are?