- Sacred places conserve biodiversity.
- Amy Goodman interviews Michael Pollan.
- Mapping food.
- Bringing back the prairie.
- Urban forestry in Toronto.
Visualizing agrobiodiversity in markets
I’ve just come across two Flickr groups which are intensely interesting from an agrobiodiversity perspective. Flickr is a photo sharing site, and I have in fact blogged about it before here, for example on how it could be used to map crop diversity. The two groups bring together photos taken in markets, with a lot of fruits and vegetables featured. As with my previous post on tomatoes, have a look at the mapping option in particular. A great time-waster, but I bet it could be used to look at geographic patterns in vegetable diversity in markets.
So much, much more than a weed
According to self-described “cultivator” David Randall in The Independent, it’s going to be a bumper year for dandelions in the UK.
Yet not everyone is clapping their hands with glee. According to reports in less ecologically sensitive newspapers, keen gardeners and lawn obsessives see dandelions as trouble, blemishes to their idea of contrived perfection, the removal of whose deep taproots can rick the sturdiest of backs. To them, dandelions are the enemy, insurgent forces of nature, forever pushing aside the “real” garden flowers, and taking over. They are thus condemned, in that most loaded of horticultural terms, as “weeds”.
This word, to those of us who have been gardening with dandelions for years, is not only wrong, but hurtful. Taraxacum officinale, as we cultivators call it, is a much undervalued addition to any plot. Not only do its golden rosettes brighten the dingiest corner, but you can use it to construct a salad, make an acceptable table wine, or even, when it runs to seed, tell the time. And you can’t say that about all those bloody purple alliums of which Chelsea’s show gardeners are so fond.
Quite right. Dandelions have a long history of use in medicine, yes, but also food. Although they do take some preparation. And of course there’s wine too. All this, plus an interesting taxonomy, and an endangered endemic relative. What more can you ask for? Weed indeed.
Farmers’ market fails to market diversity
Wandering around London on Friday, we came across the Pimlico Road Farmers’ Market. A couple of dozen stall selling everything from fruits and vegetables to cheese to all kinds of meat products, mostly sourced locally, meaning within 100 miles of the M25, the motorway that goes all the way around London. Friendly people. Beautiful produce, beautifully displayed. All impeccably organically certified — signs to that effect were everywhere. Made artisanally, naturally, according to traditions which no doubt trace their origins back to the mist-shrouded times of, well, the last Tory government, probably. And yet, and yet…
Apart from one stall selling tomatoes
and another one selling apples and apple products
there was really no indication that agrobiodiversity was in any way valued, either by the sellers or buyers.
None of the stalls had more than one or two varieties of any of the fruits and vegetables on display. Ok, I thought, fair enough, we’re not dealing with a huge catchment area. But there was not even any mention of variety names on the labels. Maybe they’re all rather boring commercial cultivars and breeds, and the stall owners don’t want to draw attention to that fact. The European Union doesn’t make it particularly easy to grow heirlooms, as we’ve pointed out here before. And indeed a brief chat with a couple of stall holders did in fact reveal that none of the veggies on display were particularly noteworthy local varieties. Pity. It seems that the fact that produce is organically grown is an immeasurably more important selling point than its status as an ancient landrace, at least in this market in an affluent part of London, which I found surprising. I wonder if some enterprising student is making a study of all such markets across London.
Excellent pork pies though.
The end of the line for Egypt Baladi?
The controversy over the Egyptian pig cull is turning very nasty.
There are estimated to be more than 300,000 pigs in Egypt, but the World Health Organisation says there is no evidence there of the animals transmitting swine flu to humans.
Pig-farming and consumption is concentrated in Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority, estimated at 10% of the population.
Many are reared in slum areas by rubbish collectors who use the pigs to dispose of organic waste. They say the cull will harm their businesses and has renewed tensions with Egypt’s Muslim majority.
The Domestic Animal Diversity Information System hosted by FAO records only one pig landrace in Egypt, called Egypt Baladi, from بلاد which just means land or soil. “Baladi” means something like “of this land”. The pig has a long history in Egypt, but I can’t find any information on its genetic affinities. If the total cull goes ahead, will a unique, ancient landrace be lost forever?