Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
Fork and Bottle, a “guide to eating, drinking and living”, recently updated its page of seed sources. The page offers personal experiences and recommendations from two dedicated growers in the USA.
I have added the link as an update to our page of Seed Exchanges; I’d be happy to add any others you send.
There’s a 250 hectare park between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in Israel that aims to recreate some of the agricultural landscapes of the Old Testament, pairing living exhibits with the appropriate texts. Started 35 years ago, Neot Kedumim features plants, animals and agricultural processes — olive presses, threshing floors — dating back 2000 years and more.
That’s very interesting, I imagine, but I can’t help thinking that what the region really needs is a “Cradle of (western) Agriculture” Museum. Attractions like the Potato Park in Peru give tourists a different taste of history, often literally. And they can raise more general awareness of the importance of agricultural biodiversity. I know I’m dreaming, but it would be nice to see the countries of the Middle East settle their differences for long enough to build such a museum, even deliberately located in three or four different countries.
Agro-tourism in general seems to be becoming more popular; maybe we should compile a global list of places where people can see local culture and the foods it produces? Send us your suggestions.
By the way, I was alerted to Neot Kedumim by this article, but don’t bother going there. It seems to be a blatant rip-off of this much longer and more interesting piece in the Jerusalem Post.
You may remember a post some time back on an atlas of agriculture in Bhutan. Now here’s an on-line database of governorate-level agricultural statistics for Syria. Maybe not as nice as an atlas, but still pretty useful for planning agricultural biodiversity conservation. Especially as there is time-series data going back to 1985, which could be used to identify areas of genetic erosion through the (admittedly imperfect) proxy of decreasing total acreage. But when will agricultural statisticians and census-takers start collecting data on numbers of varieties, at least of staple crops?
Two stories on the archaeology of ancient plant use caught my eye today. One reports – unfortunately very briefly – on a 4,000 year old perfume factory from Cyprus, listing some of the plants used. The other describes the discovery of what could be, at 6,500 years old, the earliest evidence of wine-making, or at least the mashing up of grapes.
I was pretty blown away by a student video on biodiversity that I first saw at Evolving Thoughts, a science blog. It is a really classy little film, one I would have been proud to have made myself, a rapid romp through the entire subject of biodiversity and why it matters. But — you knew there was going to be a but — the entire thing devoted about half a sentence to agricultural biodiversity, and even then it was a throwaway line about food coming “from nature”.
Well, that just won’t do. So Luigi and I had a quick conversation and decided to launch the First Great Agro.agro.biodiver.se Competition: make a better movie (which we will interpret very liberally — animation, Ken Burns-style stills, whatever) and focus on agricultural biodiversity. Perhaps there should be a second category for posters?
We haven’t yet decided on a prize (how about an iPod nano?) or the detailed rules or the closing date or how to enter or how the winner will be decided. But we’re announcing it now so that people have a chance to prepare their entries. Maybe it should run for a year? Help us, please, by sending us your comments on this hare-brained scheme and also making it known to anyone and everyone who might be interested.
The Rules are here. If you don’t like them, tell us why.