Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
To those who dont know, sorghum and millet are the poor man’s corn, very difficult to process into a digestible (eatable) form. Sorghum and millet were considered in my time as forrage, animal feed, unfit for human consumption.
Interesting perspective, from a water engineer, no less. Of course, one of the advantages of sorghum and millet might be that they don’t need water engineers quite as much as corn.
Via Hills and Plains Seedsavers, a video from Send a Cow, the people behind the keyhole gardens of Lesotho. To every thing, there is a season, clearly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjcjCCx3BWYI’m going to quibble, just a bit. Not one of the veggies given a namecheck in the video could be considered local. Are there really no nutritious and neglected species that the people of Lesotho could be growing? I couldn’t find any.
And don’t miss the extended comment on my original post from Jack C, a retired Peace Corps volunteer in Lesotho. His view:
If the outside world wishes to play a role in improving Lesotho, they need to be ready to put up real investments that open up non-agricultural means of economic development. Short of that, the Basotho themselves need to implement the educational, social, and land reforms necessary to give those struggling keyhole gardeners the option of leaving the land. Praise of their industriousness is welcome, but what they truly need are choices. The land can longer support them.
Salutary.
Synsepalum dulcificum is apparently the latest thing in the salons of the chic.
CARRIE DASHOW dropped a large dollop of lemon sorbet into a glass of Guinness, stirred, drank and proclaimed that it tasted like a “chocolate shake.â€
Nearby, Yuka Yoneda tilted her head back as her boyfriend, Albert Yuen, drizzled Tabasco sauce onto her tongue. She swallowed and considered the flavor: “Doughnut glaze, hot doughnut glaze!â€
Could there be a new export market for the “miracle berry” with its extraordinary ability to change the way things taste?
Speaking of which, I was at a nursery the other day and noticed that they offered plants of Stevia rebaudiana. that’s another of those well-known miracle plants, which is itself sweet, rather than making other things taste weird. I was interested because last I heard, Stevia was not permitted in Europe. Admittedly I haven’t kept up; maybe it is now. Anyway, I niblled on a bit of leaf, and it was remarkably sweet.