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Sorghum to Swaziland; coals to Newcastle?

I’m having a little trouble getting my head round this one. The “Republic of China on Taiwan” funded a successful project to teach Swazi farmers how to grow sorghum in areas with little rainfall. You might have thought that at least a few local farmers would have known how to grow this staple, but apparently all had been forgotten in the rush to cotton and maize. The Swazi Minister of Agriculture also said that education assisted the move away from sorghum:

Sorghum needed someone in the fields to chase away birds and because most children now go to school, maize then became popular.

The farmers who took part in the project were happy enough with the result. I just hope they don’t keep their children away from school to work as scarecrows.

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A chef on seed saving

Chef’s Corner seems like a great idea: a blog by an experienced chef interested in American food traditions and the agrobiodiversity that underpins them. A recent post waxed lyrical about seed saving. Problem is, prior to this month’s six posts, the only previous ones were in May 2007. So I’m not sure how serious Chef Robert is about this venture. But I hope he sticks with it.

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American Gothic, 21st century style

Somewhat related to Jeremy’s post just below, there’s an article in the New York Times about young Americans going back to the farm. Or rather, going to the farm for the first time: we’re talking Upper East Siders clambering onto tractors. Would be interesting to see whether the percentage of organic farmers among them turns out to be above the average, and whether they will tend to eschew biofuels and favour weird niche crops, heirloom varieties, and agricultural biodiversity in general. Via Metafilter.

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Local to where?

One of the great dangers of the internet is that it makes everywhere seem like next door. So when I stumbled across Local Harvest my first thought was, “Not to here it isn’t”. But that’s needless nitpickery. The fact is, southern Europe is still sufficiently diverse that one doesn’t really need a service such as this to locate a decent source of locally grown food. I can go to my local market and ask where the produce was grown and get an answer. But I also know that this is becoming more and more of a luxury. So perhaps it would be nice for the many and varied farmers and farmers’ market schemes across Europe to come up with something similar. There’s something in London, but it isn’t nearly as inclusive as it makes out. May as well get started with it now, before we really need it. Or maybe there’s already something similar out there?

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Food choices in the future

Glenn, in a comment on Luigi’s wheat heat post, has this to say:

The question about whether to change crops or change varieties needs more attention. There is an institutional inertia, such that CIMMYT would never suggest changing crops. Nor would any other commodity center since they have a vested interest in R+D oriented towards changing varieties. Agricultural biodiversity proponents would also seem to have a conflict of interest. If you could just change crops, the diversity within a crop may not be so important. I don’t believe that, but it would seem that some research on changing varieties or changing crops would be useful.

I think this is a very interesting and important point. (I disagree with the notion that proponents of agrobiodiversity aren’t interested, because diversity will remain important, but that’s a separate issue.) We are forever hearing that X people don’t eat Y, and to a certain extent that is true. The Bengal Famine of 1943 is often trotted out as the canonical example, when rice-eaters starved rather than eat wheat (though the story is definitely a lot more complicated than that). But world history is also absolutely full of counterexamples. Italians, for example, don’t like to be told that their pomodori, peperoncini, fagioli are Johnny-come-latelies to these shores, but they are. And then there’s the way maize and the potato swept all before them. We need to know more about the anthropology of diet and how people do indeed make the choice to adopt new staples and new condiments.