Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog

How frustrating. The excellent Agrobiodiversity Grapevine links to an article about indigenous vegetables in East Africa at Africa Science News Service. The article concerns a report Development and promotion of technologies for sustainable production and utilization of Indigenous Vegetables for nutrition security and wealth creation in Kenya, but ASNS’s link to the source of the report is broken and I cannot find it anywhere. I’d like to see what the full report has to say; the article mentions nutrition, horticulture, incomes and research, aspects of the use of African leafy vegetables that I’m sure many people are interested in.

The Economist is promoting entomophagy, but I have my doubts. Yes, insects are nutritious. Yes other food is expensive. And maybe eating insects “is common in some 113 countries”. But the fact of the matter is that in other countries, I doubt that it is going to happen any time soon, no matter how good it might be for us, for the planet, for everything. I’ve eaten my share of insects; fried locusts are a favourite. And Luigi likes the odd mopane worm. We’re both entirely happy with decapod crustaceans too. But it is my considered view that outside of those 113 countries, insects are going to continue to be a hard sell.