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One village at a time

The Guardian Group in the UK has got together with Amref and Barclays to try “to enlist your help in improving the lives of the people of Katine sub-county, in north-east Uganda.” They call the initiative It Starts with a Village. And they say its aim is to lift Katine out of the Middle Ages, a time of “civil war, plague and ignorance.”

What do we hope to achieve over the three years of the plan? Quite a lot, we hope. In consultation with the people of Katine, Amref has drawn up an overview of local needs and a comprehensive plan (PDF file) for how it hopes to meet them.

That’s a lot of hope. In the agriculture sector, the workplan includes, among other things, organizing farmers’ groups, introducing and testing new crops and varieties, doing marketing studies and improving local marketing skills. You can get an idea of the challenges ahead by reading about Esau Edonu, a local farmer, and watching a short video. There does seem to be an awareness of the importance of agrobiodiversity, for example to adapt to climate change. Maybe the emphasis is a little too much on bringing in new things for the market. Anyway, the strong focus on adding value locally to agricultural biodiversity is surely a good idea.

I’m not sure what to think of this effort to privatize aid. Is it just another example of well-intentioned but ill-conceived European do-gooding in Africa? Or does it stand a chance of making a difference? I’ll be following its progress on the project blog. Maybe I’ll even make a donation…

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Slimmed down front page stories

Update: with the score tied at 1 all, I put in a poll, right.

I was getting a little worried that we were posting so many items a day that some might have been slipping under your radar. So I tweaked the home page to show excerpts of each story. You have to click to continue reading. And you can use your browser’s Back button to go back, or work your way through the Latest Posts links over on the right.

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Reinventing the wheel

More evidence of multiple independent domestication events. Previous work has shown such a pattern for rice in Asia and cucurbits in the America. Now it’s the turn of barley in Eurasia. A paper just out ((Saisho, Daisuke, Purugganan, Michael. (2007) Molecular phylogeography of domesticated barley traces expansion of agriculture in the Old World. Genetics.)) looked at both sequences of 5 genes and also morphological traits in a geographically widespread set of 250-odd landraces. ((From a Japanese university genebank.))

The results suggest that the crop was first domesticated 10,000 years ago somewhere in the Fertile Crescent, from whence it spread to Europe, North Africa and Ethiopia (the material from Ethiopia was somewhat distinct, as has already been documented). However, there was apparently also a second domestication, much later. It occurred in the region encompassing southern Central Asia, the eastern Iranian plataeau and the edge of the Indian subcontinent, and it is material from here that spread eastward starting maybe 2,500 years ago, possibly along the Silk Road, to give rise to the barleys of India, the Himalayas and China.

This is not an unusual pattern in Eurasian agricultural biodiversity. Sheep and cattle DNA data also show “two highly divergent lineages that distinguish European and Asian types, indicating a second independent evolution of these livestock species outside the Near East.” Not unusual, but somewhat puzzling. As the barley authors conclude:

It remains unclear why different cultures sought to re-invent these domesticated species several times rather than simply obtain them through diffusion from other farming societies.

The authors of the barley study speculate that the second domestication happened either because of the transmission of knowledge, or as an independent innovation. I find the second option a bit hard to take. Could it be that the results of the first domestication effort were just not adapted to conditions outside the Fertile Crescent, or there was a barrier to their diffusion? Or maybe it was just a matter of pride for the inhabitants of the Iranian plateau to have their own agrobiodiversity?

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Pigmies huge worldwide

We have stumbled into a world of which I was barely aware. Sure, I knew a bit about falabella horses, and chihuahuas and other tiny dogs. But Luigi’s nine-word entry on mini-pigs has attracted more interest than anything else we have ever posted here before, at least in terms of the sheer number and persistence of the comments.

But there’s a whole farmyard of miniature breeds out there. Cows (and full grown bulls) that stand no higher than a man’s hip. Tiny Nigerian Dwarf dairy goats, to say nothing of the Australian Miniature Goat Association Inc. There are sheep that go through life struggling under the weight of being known as Olde English Babydoll Miniature Southdowns.

All of which — and there is lots, lots more — is testament both to the diversity within each livestock species and the overweaning desire of people to shape animals to meet their human needs. But really, what is the point?

When I was Googling away and whooping with amazement, my companion asked that very question. And, to answer herself, “I suppose if you had a very small farm …”; and her voice trailed off.

Back to the pocket pigs, obviously they are cute as can be, and lots of people want one. But what are they for? Fun, I suppose. Or very small hams. The people who are clamouring to own one probably don’t want to know this, but there’s a specific breed of minipig that has a registered tradename — Ellegaard Göttingen Minipigs ®; –and that was developed for the pharmaceutical testing industry; Dr Evil would definitely approve. As for the others, I confess to being slightly at a loss.

I’m reminded of a scene from an old Hollywood movie, possibly The Front Page, in which the grizzled baggy-pants old reporter quizzes the young cub, thusly:

GB-POR: Go downtown and get the details on that sex maniac.
YC: <looks very puzzled>
GB-POR: You know what a sex maniac is, don’t you boy?
YC: <looks somewhat sheepish> Er, no sir.
GB-POR: A sex maniac is someone who sells newspapers

A pocket pig is something that attracts blog comments.