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Perennial kales in Ecuador

Where did that come from, I asked myself, as we looked around the home garden of an agrotourist lodge near Cotacachi in Ecuador. No, not the wonderful neotropical fruits, or the fiery Brugmannsia, or the tree they called guava that looked to me like a carob; certainly a legume of some sort. 1 Not any of the exotica that were at home here, but this thing, a brassica looking for all the world like a small tree.

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To me it looked like one of the perennial kales, or even the Jersey Walking Stick Cabbage that I’ve grown in the UK and seen in Basque country and parts of Portugal. On the other side of the path was a red-leaved variety that had a much more dissected leaf, a little like Red Russian kale but again growing like a tree.

Fortunately the lady of the lodge, Dona Digna, who has every reason to be proud of the accomplishments of her community, was there with us, and even more fortunately I had the services of an expert translator. 2 I asked how they used it, and was told that they picked individual leaves as needed, and that now it was not good at all, much too tough. OK, well then how do you get tender leaves? In the spring, we make new plants. How?

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At which Digna snapped off a branch of the red kale and said that you just plant a stem in the ground. So it never has flowers? No, never.

So it really is a perennial brassica, not one of the walking stick types, which do flower and set seed. But that’s as far as I could go in my investigation. I have no idea how long the local people have been growing it, where they first got it from, or what they think of it. But it was fun to see something truly exotic in Ecuador. And maybe it could add a datapoint to a study that revealed a high degree of duplication among perennial kale accessions.

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Niche products from Bengali cows highlighted

There’s a wonderful message just in from Dr Sandip Banerjee to the DAD-Net discussion list on domestic animal diversity. After sounding the alarm for the Rumpless Fowl and various local goat breeds of Bengal, which he says require urgent conservation efforts, he has this to say about what’s happening with the cattle 3:

…I was overwhelmed when I saw a herd of indigenous cattle being maintained at the International Society of Krishna Consiousness (ISKON) farm at Mayapur. The herd they maintain comprises of Gir, Kankrej and Sahiwal breeds. The animals are very well maintained and it was really pleasing to see the magnificent animals and their calves. They are also marketing clarified butter (ghee) prepared from the cream obtained from the native Indian cattle, Go Ark (a traditional Ayurvedic medicine developed from the urine and medicinal herbs which has been patented Number US patent-6410059, dt 25/06/02), the other products are Pachamrit (for gastric troubles) and Ghanabati (tablets of dried cow urine). These product are developed according to the traditional Ayurvedic principles and are marketed through their outlets.

I had no idea that it was possible to obtain quite this range of products from cattle. This is how Dr Banerjee signs off:

If such good activities are carried out by societies throughout India then why are the Government Farms (which are well established and staffed) fail to deliver, I can only conclude it by saying that there is lack of serious willingness to do so at all levels.

Sounds like a gauntlet being thrown down.

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More from IIED on landraces and climate change

Jeremy took IIED researchers to task a few days ago over their antipathy to GURTs, as articulated in a recent press release. One of the researchers quoted in that release, Krystyna Swiderska, is now the subject of an interview. GURTs don’t come up, but Dr Swiderska is clearly not completely against GMOs in principle:

If GM crops were produced with the people who need them and who will plant them, and they are specifically addressing their needs, then maybe they can be helpful.

Her main concern is to safeguard the rights of farmers.

We need to recognize farmers’ rights to maintain genetic diversity. We also need to protect land rights, cultural and spiritual values, and customary laws. Traditional knowledge is dependent on genetic diversity and vice versa and those two are dependent on farmers having rights to land and plant varieties.

Asked if traditional farmers could feed rising populations in a warming world, she points out that “there are technologies based on traditional seed varieties that can increase yields.” These technologies mainly turn out to be participatory plant breeding. I would have liked to see more discussion of this topic.

I’ll try to follow up on some work on genetic erosion I was not aware of:

Our research on rice in India’s eastern Himalayas, on potatoes in the Peruvian Andes, and on maize in southwest China, found significant reductions of traditional varieties in the last 10 to 20 years. There used to be 30 to 40 varieties of a crop being planted but now there are maybe 5 to 10 varieties.

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How do you improve child nutrition and livelihoods of rural families?

Sometimes it is hard to tell whether what seems like good news is indeed either good or news. So it is with a recent press release from Compatible Technology International, a non-profit based in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. CTI is sharing a grant of US$673,000 from the McKnight Foundation with ICRISAT (The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-arid Tropics) and Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania. But what is the grant for?

A release from CTI points out that malnutrition is widespread in Malawi and Tanzania, the target countries, and that “the need is urgent to develop and harvest improved, nutritious foods using locally available crops such as groundnuts (commonly called peanuts)”.

Sounds like they may be planning to use “locally available crops” to deliver more diverse diets and thus better nutrition and health, music to my ears.

But how? And what kind of crops? There really isn’t much more in the release. Some guff about reducing post-harvest losses, a non-specific objective to “improve the nutrition of rural households, particularly children”, selling “groundnut-based food products” in local markets to raise incomes, and other good stuff, but, as the children of Malawi and Tanzania might say, no real meat.

CTI’s expertise seems to be “designing food and water technologies that are sustainable and appropriate to local cultures” and that too is surely a good thing, especially as one of the other objectives of the project is to “reduce the intense daily labor typically endured by women”. Maybe they’re just flogging peanut-butter machines., though I doubt it.

I realize I’m being overly negative here. But the headline on the release is Compatible Technology International Project to Enhance Child Nutrition and Livelihoods of Rural Families in Malawi and Tanzania. Ignore the first four words; most other readers will. I think I’m still entitled to ask just how they plan to do that, even of a simple press release. Please CTI, ICRISAT, Sokoine — anyone — enlighten us.