Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Robert appears to be a betting man. He reckons Obama will be growing Eruca sativa on the White House lawn ere long. Me, I’m not so sure, although I do hope that Roger the Gardener’s wildest dreams do come true. I don’t know enough about this betting lark though. Is there somewhere that will offer genuine odds on rocket aimed at the White House lawn? ((A blatant attempt to spook the spooks and ensnare trouble-makers.))
Meanwhile, let’s not forget where this all began.
Whenever I hear people talking about reviving food traditions, I always want to ask them what they’re doing with expatriates. They are often the people who are most attached to traditional foods and assorted agrobiodiversity from back home. Take my wife. No sooner did our visitor fly in from Nairobi, laden with uji mix,
that she had the stuff boiling away on the stove as if she hadn’t tasted porridge in years. ((Which come to think of it she probably hasn’t.))
Now, I’m not saying that Kenyans abroad are going to save finger millet cultivation in the Nandi Hills or whatever. But they might be a good place to start.
It seems that two key organizations dealing with underutilized crops — the Sri Lanka-based International Centre for Under-utilised Crops (ICUC) and the Global Facilitation Unit for Underutilised Species (GFU), based at Bioversity International in Rome — are merging and establishing a new entity. It will be called Crops for the Future (CroFu) and will be based in Malaysia. Best wishes for the future to CroFu.