Old cookbooks are a great way of documenting changes in taste, eating habits and diets, but I wonder if they’ve ever been used in a systematic way to track changes in biodiversity in a country’s landscape, or agricultural biodiversity — either at species or genetic level — on its farms. Such thoughts are prompted by news of an exhibition of historic Australian cookbooks, with their recipes for things like parrots and kangaroo brains. Beer is a crucial complement to much Aussie grub, of course, and I hope the hop procurement problems being encountered by the brewing industry in the US are not being experienced Down Under.
Farming and tourism
You may remember my recent post from Lima bemoaning the lost opportunity of linking agrobiodiversity education with tours of an archaeological site. Here’s an example of such an opportunity emphatically grasped. An historic farmhouse in Rhode Island is offering “visitors, particularly children, a glimpse into the lost world of small-scale farming in New England, when the distance between the chicken coop and the dinner plate was much shorter.” And that includes heirloom varieties, for example of tomatoes, of which the staff grow 30. They also keep some local 1 livestock breeds, including Red Devon cattle, famous for pulling settlers’ wagon trains West.
“One of the things we’ve worked on since we’ve been here is constantly trying to cultivate in people’s minds and hearts a preservation ethic, not just about preserving an old house,” he said, “but preserving landscapes.”
Breeding clubs
As in many other (most?) walks of life, there is much that professional breeders can learn from “amateurs” (i.e., farmers), and vice versa. The experience of the taro breeders’ club in Samoa is a good example of that. Danny has already blogged for us about this. There are also examples of livestock (and pet) breeders’ clubs, and plenty of them according to Google. Many more than for crops, it looks to me. I don’t know much about such livestock clubs, and would welcome more information on how successful they have been, and whether we who are more into crops can learn anything from their experience. Anyway, there’s a great discussion of the advantages of the club approach to breeding crops for pest resistance in a downloadable recent 1995 IDRC publication. It’s accompanied by a list of crops best avoided by clubs, though the Evil Fruit Lord begs to differ.
Nibbles: Sprouts, Mice, Prices, Prices, Prices, Prices, Gooseberry, Fruits, Fruits, Subsidies, Climate change, Fruits again, Culture, Irrigation
- Brussels sprout variety lost and found in Wales. Alas, it’s an F1. Start breeding now.
- Mice destroying Australian sorghum. Pied Piper unavailable for comment.
- Impact of prices in Ethiopia.
- Impact of prices in Kenya.
- Impact of prices in Latin America.
- Biofuels not to blame for food price rises. Fatuous, Jeremy comments.
- Uttar Pradesh State Biodiversity Board steps in to save rare Indian gooseberry. Is this it? Doesn’t seem rare.
- Pitaya explained. Check out the links too.
- “Picture it, an orange grape!” No thanks.
- The Economist on the CAP. Money quote: …if Europeans want to produce food in a special region or way, “let them label it, and see if the market will pay for it.â€
- Speaking of which. British wine industry in trouble. You heard me.
- Other fruits not doing well either. Via.
- Royal Ploughing Ceremony goes well in Cambodia. That’s all right then.
- On the other hand, there may be something to this traditional knowledge stuff after all.
International Biodiversity Day: Biodiversity and Agriculture
A partial round-up of some of the many buckets of bits that have flowed across our desktops these past couple of days:
Ghana: “Mr Darko therefore implored the youth to use their exuberance to restore and enhance the environment and appealed to traditional rulers to support the enforcement on bye-laws against unfriendly environmental practices.”
Germany (via India): “He [German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel] noted that Indian farmers had cultivated 30,000 species of rice a century ago and that there were now just 30 left.”
Germany: “I’ll tell them that food and water are at risk. I’ll tell them that the 6 to 8 percent of GDP just on forests that we’re talking about is actually the total livelihood of 2 billion of the world’s poor. I’ll tell them that the fisheries that are basically going to die out in 40 years time don’t just mean $80 to 100 billion worth of lost fishing income, but also lost protein for the world’s billion poorest people. How are you going to cure the problem of health for these people? How are you going to provide income and a livelihood to the 2 billion poorest who depend on this?”
Germany — Klaus Töpfer, Man of the People: “[W]e need less paper and more concrete political decisions. The protection of species is not some luxury item by Gucci or Hermès, for people who have no problems.”
Cameroon: “[E]xperts drawn from the administration, university institutions and the civil society, discussed with diligence things to consider when carrying out agricultural activities in order to better preserve biodiversity.”
Zimbabwe: “Zimbabwe should conserve landscape (landrace? Ed.) varieties of its major food crops and also integrate biodiversity conservation in the agricultural sector to realise the benefits of dietary diversity and promote food security, the Minister of Environment and Tourism, Cde Francis Nhema, has said.”
Kenya: “From the perspective of facing the food crisis, developing agriculture biodiversity means understanding the diversity of highly nutritious traditional food system,†said Dr. Joseph Jojo Baidu-Forson, regional director of sub-Saharan Africa, Biodiversity International (Bioversity? Ed.).”
UN secretary General (via who knows where): “About a fifth of domestic animal breeds are at risk of extinction, with an average of one lost each month. Of the 7,000 species of plants that have been domesticated over the 10,000-year history of agriculture, only 30 account for the vast majority of the food we eat every day. Relying on so few species for sustenance is a losing strategy.”