Posts

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Vegetables in Africa, traditional and otherwise

The FARA Secretariat blog linked to a couple of items which are sort of related, if you look hard enough. One is about Prof. Mary Abukutsa-Onyango’s work studying (in particular the nutritional properties) and promoting traditional leafy greens in Kenya, which has just won her a fellowships from African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD). You can read or listen to a podcast about it. The other piece is about the African Drylands Commodity Atlas. The connection is that there is actually a section on vegetables in the atlas, along with coffee, cotton, sugar, timber, livestock products etc. Alas, it’s things like cabbages, tomatoes and onions, destined for Europe.

In the rush to export to Europe, African domestic and regional vegetable markets have often been overlooked. Local, district and national markets provide the first outlet and are the primary clients for increased vegetable production.

Still a lot of promotion to be done on those traditional greens, despite the potential for intra-regional trade. Come to think of it, a third of yesterday’s FARA blog posts may also be relevant to African indigenous vegetables. This year’s Economic Report on Africa is focused on “Developing African Agriculture through Regional Value Chains.” Can we hope for a joined-up analysis of all this from FARA?

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“I find that no Plants were as yet collected for His Majestys Garden at Kew”

Smithsonian Magazine has a long, wonderful piece this month about the breadfruit — and Captain Bligh — in Jamaica. It’s by Caroline Alexander, who wrote a book on the famous mutiny, The Bounty. People forget that after the Bounty debacle in 1789, Bligh eventually, doggedly went back to the Pacific and completed his original mission of taking breadfruit to the Caribbean. In 1793, the Providence finally delivered its Tahitian cargo to Jamaica. Its descendants are still there. There’s a companion piece on cooking with breadfruit which includes Diana Ragone’s (of the Breadfruit Institute) recipe for her tasty breadfruit nachos. You can become a fan of the Breadfruit Institute on Facebook, which is how I got to the Smithsonian piece.

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Millennium Seed Bank on the BBC

And also at the BBC, “Banking On Life.”

In this study of the history and future of seed banks across the world, Richard Scrase takes a look at the largest such store in the world, The Millennium Seed Bank in Sussex, as it takes in its billionth seed.

Although Svalbard gets a mention too. You can also listen to the programme here. Not clear if it is associated with the summer exhibition of the same name. Have we had enough about genebanks on the media of late, do you think?

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Five Farms: documentary series

It’s been a busy week, so although I noticed a BBC World documentary series about Five Farms, I thought, I’ll save that for the weekend. And I forgot to bookmark the page at the BBC. Now, when I actually go looking for it, I’m covered in confusion. Truth be told, the BBC, domestic and World, provides magnificent service, but it isn’t always easy to find what you’re looking for in its web sites. Anyway, I had enough nuggets of information to go searching for the motherlode. And here it is: www.fivefarms.org.

If you want to hear the programmes, which were made by the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, they’re most easily available in a variety of formats from WUNC, North Carolina Public Radio. And there are multimedia video clips.

I didn’t find it easy to subscribe to the podcasts, but I have downloaded the programmes to listen to as I find time. This page makes it relatively easy to do so.

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Agrobiodiversity timelines roundup

While looking for something else, I came across an interesting food timeline. Perhaps a bit selective, but definitely worth exploring. Then by coincidence I stumbled on another timeline, this time of gardening around the world. Again, not a bad way to waste some time, although way too many links seem to be broken. Anyway, I naturally tried to go for the trifecta, but I could not find an even half-decent timeline of agricultural history. Maybe you can?