- Red rice extract prevents heart problems.
- Got milk?
- Marrakesh date palms in trouble. But back in 2002 Gary Martin was doing something about it, I thought.
- “Diet for a small planet” revisited.
- Cuba’s urban agriculture revolution.
- “The Mango Mela, an agricultural fair dedicated to the fruit, … featured only 20 varieties, compared with more than 100 last year.”
How to build a keyhole garden
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.
Micronutrients No. 1
The Copenhagen Consensus has just decreed that supplying missing micronutrients — especially vitamin A and zinc — is the most important priority for global development. The cost is $60 million per year, yielding benefits in health and cognitive development of over $1 billion.
The Copenhagen Consensus website says:
Despite significant reductions in income poverty in recent years, undernutrition remains widespread. Recent estimates from UNICEF (2006) are that “one out of every four children under five – or 146 million children in the developing world – is underweight for his or her ageâ€, and that “each year, …undernutrition contributes to the deaths of about 5.6 million children under the age of fiveâ€. The undernutrition associated with missing micronutrients in poor quality diets is even more widespread than that indicated by underweight alone.
Undernutrition in turn has negative effects on income and on economic growth. Undernutrition leads to increased mortality and morbidity which lead to loss of economic output and increased spending on health. Poor nutrition means that individuals are less productive (both due to physical and mental impairment), and that children benefit less from education.
Reducing undernutrition is one of the Millennium Goals (Goal 1 aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger), and is also a key factor underpinning several others. Achieving goals in primary education, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and combating HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases all depend crucially on nutrition.
I downloaded the Challenge Paper and the Executive Summary of it. The word “vegetable” does not appear in either. Nor “diversity”. That’s as far as I’m prepared to go at present.
Breakfast Nibbles: Blueberries, Tomatoes, Coffee, Assorted seeds, African potato, Branding, Mobiles, Food, Myanmar
- Remember to eat blueberries to remember.
- Darwin’s tomatoes? The genetic change identified.
- Wild coffee conservation. Danny says wild coffee genes assessed at between 0.4 and 1.5 billion US$. Joe not available for comment.
- “But if you don’t grow your seed, you lose your power.”
- Amadumbe being sold to supermarkets in South Africa. Great. But someone please tell me: what the heck is it?
- More coffee? More for coffee!
- “Sometimes our expert is stumped.”
- Mark Bittman makes the case for vegetarianism (and much more) on TED video. Money quote: “It’s not the beta-catotene, it’s the plant.”
- FAO maps Myanmar agriculture.
Not just what you cook, but how you cook it
An article in the New York Times explains that different cooking methods change the nutritional value of different vegetables. There are some surprises there, which may be of interest to people aiming to get the maximum benefit from their veggies. Overall, though, I suspect those who can afford to decide whether to bake, boil or microwave are least likely to need their micronutrients, while those who have no choice also have the greatest need.