Do wander over to the latest edition of New Agriculturist, which, among other things, has a great feature giving examples of farmers adopting new crops and other ways of making a living as alternatives to illicit, environmentally damaging or otherwise inappropriate ones.
Straight dope
Speaking of “special products” from agricultural biodiversity, check this out.
Making grains relevant
The low-carb craze of a few years back has spoiled the nutritional reputation of cereal grains, and it is up to the industry to get people eating them again. So said Francesco Pantò of the pasta giant Barilla yesterday at the first European congress of the American Association of Cereal Chemists International (AACCI), in Montpellier. He suggested five ways to do that:
- develop new durum wheat varieties and special products that can differentiate them, as for grapes and wine
- market grains as mainstream and everyday products
- use innovative technology to incorporate new grains into familiar products
- aim for convenience, and promote the goodness of cereals and fiber
- add extra components to cereal products in order to make them into a more complete meal
The first of these will of course be particularly welcome by those of us interested in agricultural biodiversity, and I wonder whether pseudocereals like buckwheat and quinoa might also find a place under the third point.
Billionth seed banked
The Guardian reports that the Millennium Seed Bank at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, recently deposited the billionth seed in its genebank. Note, that’s not a billion species, or even a million, but the billionth seed ((Which is to say, an entirely manufactured reason, which worked, for getting a bit of press coverage.)). Normally such blatant manipulation would be beneath our exalted notice, but Kew wisely chose a useful plant on which to bestow this singular honour.
- In parts of Tanzania women depend on this species for local beer production as a major source of income.
- It is used to make various types of local baskets for transporting produce, such as tomatoes in Iringa.
- It is in high demand as a building material. It is used for scaffolding, furniture, general house construction, and fencing. Fences are susceptible to damage by termites and borers. The small stems are used for pipes and arrow shafts
All from FAO, which does not seem to think it is all that endangered. Still, Kew thinks it is worth banking, and that’s good enough for us.
FRAME
Courtesy of FAO’s Non-Wood Forest Products Digest – well worth subscribing to, by the way – comes news of FRAME’s Natural Products International Workshop, and some new audio presentations that have just become available on its website. I had not heard of FRAME before. It turns out to be a “USAID-funded program to build knowledge-sharing networks of natural resource management professionals and to help NRM practitioners and decision makers to access and use the existing body of knowledge on successful NRM experiences.”