Category: Tourism

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“The rain and wind would come”

For centuries, the Kamayurá planted their summer crops when a certain star appeared on the horizon. “When it appeared, everyone celebrated because it was the sign to start planting cassava since the rain and wind would come,” Chief Kotok recalled. But starting seven or eight seasons ago, the star’s appearance was no longer followed by rain, an ominous divergence, forcing the tribe to adjust its schedule.

It has been an ever-shifting game of trial and error since. Last year, families had to plant their cassava four times — it died in September, October and November because there was not enough moisture in the ground. It was not until December that the planting took. The corn also failed, said Mapulu, the chief’s sister. “It sprouted and withered away,” she said.

That’s from a NY Times article from the Xingu National Park in Brazil. And it’s not just the Kamayurá’s cassava that is being affected.

Deforestation and, some scientists contend, global climate change are making the Amazon region drier and hotter, decimating fish stocks in this area and imperiling the Kamayurá’s very existence. Like other small indigenous cultures around the world with little money or capacity to move, they are struggling to adapt to the changes.

That eerily echoes the experience of the Tla’Amin people, a Canadian First Nation. But that’s another story. Back to cassava. Coincidentally, our friend and colleague Andy Jarvis has just shared a presentation which looks at the effect of climate change on cassava in Latin America.

Andy J Climate Change And Cassava In Latin America July 2009

View more presentations from CIAT.

Perhaps Andy will tell us whether the changes Chief Kotok described are in line with what his models are telling him.

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High water, low water

Thanks to the NY Times’ photography blog Lens, two great multimedia presentations for you, both on a watery theme, but with some agrobiodiversity thrown in. From Panos, a moving video of the story of how Tuvaluans are trying — and, alas, mainly failing — to cope with climate change. It’s getting harder and harder to maintain the way of life, including the taro and pulaka gardens, in the face of rising water levels. But the alternative, life in New Zealand, is not appealing to everyone. And from the other side of the world, illustrating the opposite problem, a photoessay on Iraq’s Marsh Arabs, who live by fishing, growing a few crops, and raising buffaloes. But “farmers say lowered water levels and pollution has made it difficult to keep the buffalo healthy.”

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Nibbles: Camel, Maya forestry, Ancient barley, Cattle diversity, Poisons, Agroforestry Congress, Lactase persistence

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Agricultural biodiversity and its perception, then and now

Hanging around the library today, I happened to pick up the March 2009 issue of Economic Botany, and was rewarded with a couple of really interesting papers on people’s perceptions of agrobiodiversity, and how it can be different to what you might think.

The first paper looked at knowledge of apple diversity among cider-makers in the United Kingdom and the United States. ((David Reedy, Will McClatchey, Clifford Smith, Y. Lau & K. Bridges (2009) A Mouthful of Diversity: Knowledge of Cider Apple Cultivars in the United Kingdom and Northwest United States. Economic Botany 63(1):2-15.)) The working hypothesis was that cider makers with a long history in the business would know more apple variety names that comparative neophytes. The results of semi-structured interviews with about 30 informants in Washington State, England, Wales and Northern Ireland suggested that this was not in fact the case. Experienced cider makers do indeed know more apple varieties, but not necessarily by name. They keep track of diversity in other ways, by taste, smell and ecology. The art of cider making lies in the blending, so the maker needs to know what each apple tastes like, on its own and in combination.

Cider makers who have a sense of rootedness to their land often know intricate details about trees in their orchards. They may know the rate at which they bloom, which trees do better in which conditions, or what the sugar levels of fruits will be on a given year. With all this knowledge, why would names have significance?

This would seem to contradict the findings of other studies which suggested that there’s a high degree of correspondence between number of local names and genetic diversity. Names might be lost, but the knowledge of diversity — and, at least for now, the diversity itself — is still there.

The second paper looks at how diversity in grapevines was perceived in the past. ((P. Gago, J. L. Santiago, S. Boso, V. Alonso-Villaverde & M. C. Martinez (2009) Grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.): Old Varieties are Reflected in Works of Art. Economic Botany 63(1):67-77. 10.1007/s12231-008-9059-y.)) Its subject is the Baroque altarpieces in Galicia, and in particular the twisted columns known as Solomonic. These often feature grapevine leaves, and the authors measured various morphometric variables on these representations, as well as on the real leaves of numerous varieties maintained in a local genebank. You know the kind of thing. The angle between this and that vein. The depth of the nth lobe.

They found that the representations were often very faithful, and could be used to identify specific local varieties. With a more extensive dataset (that is, more characters, and more altarpieces), it might be possible to reconstruct the history of cultivation of various now rare or extinct local cultivars. Another example of the imaginative sources of data people are looking at to get a handle on genetic erosion.