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It’s a data-rich day: breakfast and beer

The Economist shows that the price of breakfast — if breakfast consists of coffee, toast (or some other wheat product) and orange juice — is going up. In other news, The Economist explains that while poor harvests are a factor, the price surge may be due as much to low interest rates as to low harvests. Investors are apparently looking for “investable markets”. Does that sound like speculation to You?

And, in celebration of International Beer Day 1 there’s this fine chart showing the rise of craft breweries in the US. The blogger from whom I picked up the story says this is all down to Jimmy Carter deregulating the beer industry in 1979, but commenters there are not so sure. They’re wrong, and the internets prove it. That’s politics for you.

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Sub-Saharan strategies for climate change adaptation

IFPRI has just published a review of the strategies that the 10 countries that make up ASARECA, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa, plan to use to adapt to climate change. Only two strategies are common to all 10 countries: “the development and promotion of drought-tolerant and early-maturing crop species and exploitation of new and renewable energy sources”. Leave aside that the second strategy encompasses biofuels, and there’s still something else striking about the strategies.

Strangely, only one country recognizes the conservation of genetic resources as an important strategy although this is also potentially important for dealing with drought.

That country is Burundi, which we heartily applaud.

The point is not that each country should independently set out to conserve genetic resources; that would be inefficient and wasteful. But they ought at least to acknowledge the importance of conservation. And ASARECA could, at the very least, promote the International Seed Treaty and encourage members to prioritize collection of the most threatened crops and wild relatives. IFPRI could help by recognizing that genetic resources — agricultural biodiversity — underpin far more of the strategies than adaptation to drought.

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Farming and schoolchildren

I had really hoped to find something strikingly modern in a pamphlet linked by Marion Nestle, so that I could challenge you all to guess when it was written. Alas, it is too steeped in the language and context of its time. In 1917 John Dewey, the noted psychologist, educator and general all-around thinker, was urging the schools of America to encourage pupils to garden.

There will be better results from training drills with the spade and the hoe than from parading America’s youngsters up and down the school yard. 2

He adduces many convincing arguments which could, with a minor rewrite, be deployed today. Indeed, Nestle makes the connection between child nutrition bills “languishing in [the US] Congress” and Dewey’s exhortations. My question is: did they work then? A quick search reveals that Dewey’s ideas about experiential learning influenced at least a few current school gardens. However, there’s no easily-unearthed evidence that American schools took up farming and garden in 1917-18. Now if only Dewey had had an impact pathway.

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How would you promote agricultural biodiversity?

Here’s the scenario: the civic authorities have decided to install a home garden somewhere in the centre of the city. This is in a country with a very conservative attitude to its food culture, where tradition runs deep (although not as deep as to recognize that several staples of the cuisine arrived as interlopers from other lands, roughly 500 years ago.) And because your organization is based in that same city, and has a reputation for knowing about agricultural biodiversity and home gardens, the authorities have asked you to contribute in some way.

You don’t exactly know why the civic authorities are constructing the garden, although you suspect it has something to do with being seen to be green, to care about food and about diversity. And you don’t know what they want, either, or what kind of experience they are planning to offer the visiting public. A gawp at vegetables in the ground rather than in plastic? Surely not. The country hasn’t lost its agrarian roots that completely. Edumacashun? Yeah, but what is the message? You also don’t know what they want. Advice? Expertise? Something to give to visitors?

So you decide to offer them plants that might be found in a home garden far away, specifically, the nutritious African leafy vegetables that you’ve been promoting for better health, incomes and environmental sustainability. But you fear that the civic authorities might not be too keen. You fear they are likely to say something like: “Why should we plant your strange African vegetables in a garden here? What’s the point?”

What one, killer argument would you offer to persuade them?

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Manihot esculenta, I presume?

A blog post from Kew’s archivists on the Zambesi Expedition of 1858-1864 led me to Dr Livingstone’s papers, among which I stumbled on this wonderful letter to Joseph D. Hooker:

Hadley Green Barnet 11th July 1857

My Dear Dr Hooker

I beg to return you my hearty thanks for your note and the trouble you have been at in deciphering the mere fragments submitted to you. Your willingness to examine anything botanical will certainly make me more anxious to secure something for you in Africa more worthy of your time. We get meal of a kind of millet in Londa which I think is the lesser bird seed. It grows on a high stalk in this way. The seeds are small & a {slight tinge} of slate colour on the outer scale. What is the botanical name for it? It is so extensively cultiv-{ated} in Africa I think you must know. The Holcus Sorghum is the most general article in use. We speak of it as Caffre corn. Is that correct?

There are two kinds of Manioc. One sweet the other bitter & poisonous they are both mentioned in a work by Daniel on the West Coast but I have not that work nearer at hand than Linyanti so I beg to trouble you to tell me the proper names of the two species of Manioc, the Jatropha Manihot and –

As I am boring with questions. Have you the proper names for the melons which form such an important article of support on the Kalahari Desert and of one there which has the flavour of an apple. What is the name of the Palm which when the leaves are broken off gives the idea of it being triangular The ends of the leaf stalks stick on and give it the appearance referred to. A fruit mentioned at the end of Bowdich’s work with by the name Masuka was found by me in very large quantities. It is good. As it seems know can I have the proper name. Now please just attend or not to these questions as it is convenient – though I send them it is not because I think I have any claim on your time or attention – I am only putting you in the way of doing an act of charity to yours &c David Livingstone

Now, how to find the reply?

And with that, dear reader, I take my leave of you for about three weeks, which I will spend not too far, relatively speaking, from where Stanley found Livingstone. In fact, I should already be there…