On Gristmill, a brief answer to the question “are organically managed bees faring any better” in the current outbreak of Colony Collapse Disease. My summary: maybe.
Swaziland takes to sorghum … and other crops
It is a mystery to me how a johnny-come-lately like maize in Africa (or for that matter tomato in Italy) can work its way into local consciousness to the extent that people not only consider it as their own but prefer it to things that actually perform better. In one small African country, Swaziland, that may be changing.
“My maize all died in the heat, or it was stunted and the cobs were so small they were only good to give to the cattle. But look at my sorghum! It is doing well,” said Nonhlanhla Thwala, a widow in Lubombo, the country’s eastern region.
The full story is in AllAfrica.com, and it is well worth reading. It seems a shame that it takes a drought and major crop failures to provoke people into reassessing their options and returning to the agricultural biodiversity they abandoned a few generations ago. But at least it is happening.
Taking nutrition seriously in Africa
This commentary — The Sterile Nutrition Debate — has been sitting in my in tray for a couple of months because I really didn’t know what to do with it. In it an industrial chemist called Basil Kransdorff argues that the medical establishment and policy makers have consistently failed to take good nutrition seriously. They either regard it as a panacea or as useless, neither of which sees it as an essential component both of good health and of the ability to fight disease.
Confront most doctors on this issue and they will agree that nutrition is key. But getting doctors to engage with nutrition as a science and to implement it in patient management is another issue. They become confused. Where they accept that nutrients are not medicines, even when they bring health to a diseased body, they cannot bring themselves to dispense appropriate nutrients, arguing either that this will encourage dependence, or that food and nutrition are a private issue, and if handed out, should be cheap. Ironically, where doctors believe that nutrients are in fact treatments, there are incessant demands for clinical trials, designed around drug trial protocols, to prove the obvious that nutrition is good for you.
Drum Beat aims to generate discussion, and there has certainly been plenty of that. Most of it is focussed on HIV/AIDS, but there does seem to be a recognition that good nutrition is good for people, and good nutrition requires agricultural biodiversity: end of story.
Straight dope
Speaking of “special products” from agricultural biodiversity, check this out.
Making grains relevant
The low-carb craze of a few years back has spoiled the nutritional reputation of cereal grains, and it is up to the industry to get people eating them again. So said Francesco Pantò of the pasta giant Barilla yesterday at the first European congress of the American Association of Cereal Chemists International (AACCI), in Montpellier. He suggested five ways to do that:
- develop new durum wheat varieties and special products that can differentiate them, as for grapes and wine
- market grains as mainstream and everyday products
- use innovative technology to incorporate new grains into familiar products
- aim for convenience, and promote the goodness of cereals and fiber
- add extra components to cereal products in order to make them into a more complete meal
The first of these will of course be particularly welcome by those of us interested in agricultural biodiversity, and I wonder whether pseudocereals like buckwheat and quinoa might also find a place under the third point.