Agrobiodiversity is crops, livestock, foodways, microbes, pollinators, wild relatives …
You may remember a post a few days ago in which Jeremy announced that Dr José F. M. Valls has won this year’s Meyer Medal. Well, José was briefly at SIRGEALC last week before going off to get his medal, and he gave a great talk on his life’s work on wild peanut conservation and use. Unfortunately, this terrible picture is the best I could do to capture the occasion. 1
Lois Englberger of the Island Food Community of Pohnpei has kindly agreed for us to publish her thoughts on the 19th International Congress of Nutrition.
I would like to share about our participation in the 19th International Congress of Nutrition (ICN), October 4-9, 2009, in Bangkok, Thailand, as part of the global health project, led by Professor Harriet Kuhnlein, Centre of Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE)/McGill University, and the CINE team.
The ICN was a huge event with 4560 delegates from 107 countries! Our oral presentations were on October 8, at the Symposium of Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems and Nutrition: Finding Solutions in Local Cultures and Environments, and were enthusiastically received.
I am happy to report that I wore my “Let’s Go Local” t-shirt and shared about the “Go Local” initiative.
Dr. Barbara Burlingame, Senior Nutrition Officer of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, also presented our Pohnpei Banana posters in her talk on food composition and biodiversity. This is an honor for Pohnpei! Thank you Barbara!
Also what a great privilege for Podis Pedrus and Kiped Albert, community leaders of Mand, Pohnpei, FSM, and myself to participate in the Satellite Workshop on Culture, Environment and Agriculture for Food and Nutrition Security of Indigenous Peoples, held 11-15 October in Thailand, supported by CINE and Thailand government.
This included academic and community leaders from the 12 case studies in the global health project led by Prof. Kuhnlein. The countries involved were Canada, Colombia, FSM, India, Japan, Nigeria, Peru, Tanzania, and Thailand. This was an extensive study of the traditional food system, diet and health, and implementation of a two-year promotion of local food for health.
We were delighted to visit the remote Sanephong Village in Thailand’s case study of the Karen people, as superbly coordinated by our colleagues from Mahidol University. What a special visit! Traveling to a remote Karen village, seeing the tremendous outpour of hospitality, learning about their work, enjoying a feast of traditional Thai food and beautiful dancing and singing, and even riding in an ox cart! Along with the visit to Sanephong, we had other field trips and an inspiring seminar at Mahidol University in Salaya, also coordinated by our Thai colleagues. There our Pohnpei team presented about our case study in Pohnpei, FSM.
This was based in Mand Community, Pohnpei. One of the project outcomes was the local food list, including scientific names and other information, and a total of 381 food items (what great diversity). After our two-year intervention, we were happy to find a significant increase in banana varieties consumed, increase in frequency of banana and giant swamp taro consumed, increased dietary diversity, and a positive change of attitude in the community.
We would like to thank again Professor Kuhnlein and the CINE team for involving Pohnpei, FSM; our Thai friends for their wonderful hospitality; our fellow case study friends; the ICN organizers and participants; and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) for support for our participation in the event.
For more information about the global health project, see:
www.mcgill.ca/cine/resources/data/pohnpei/ — food photos/nutrient content
www.indigenousnutrition.org — documentaries
www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0370e/i0370e00.htm — recently published book 2
Beetles in the Bush hosts the latest edition of Berry go Round, the blog carnival dedicated to plants, and fungi, and things that eat plants and fungi. We found some good stuff there.
“Use it or lose it” is a frequent refrain among those who want to conserve genetic resources. We strive to point out that nothing is ever useless, we just haven’t discovered the uses yet. Sometimes, though, the use is well-known. Brewers, especially the more traditional types, often swear by specific varieties of their raw material. Golden Promise, a famous malting barley, is spoken of fondly by bearded men in sandals clutching a pint of warm cloudy brew. So I shouldn’t be surprised that the same is true of Nihonshu (日本酒). A long article at The Japan Times explains how sake makers are increasingly trying to use traditional old rice varieties.
Wataribune was used in 1939 to develop the now-dominant Yamada Nishiki strain. It had been widely used in sake making for centuries but fell into near-extinction around 50 years ago. Though it was rumored to yield brews of great depth and complexity, it was notoriously difficult to grow. The plant’s tall stalks made it vulnerable to typhoons, while its long growing season exacerbated the risks. [Takaaki] Yamauchi proposed an initiative to revive the strain, but few farmers were willing to gamble on such an uncertain enterprise.
The article goes on to describe how the master brewer eventually found 14 grams of Wataribune rice in the genebank at the National Agricultural Institute in Tsukuba, and parlayed that into a range of award-winning sakes. The photo, by article author Melinda Joe, shows how easily Wataribune rice grains fall from the ears of the stalk, making it a challenging rice strain to work with. There’s a lot more in the article, about rice varieties in sake and about ordinary Japanese people who are spearheading a movement towards more regional diversity in rice, including groups that reclaim and regenerate abandoned rice paddies.
