Down an “Active Pretox Drink,” plant a pomegranate in Afghanistan. Local varieties, I trust.
AIDS experts recognize importance of diet, apparently
You may remember a little discussion about agrobiodiversity and AIDS that we had here some time ago. Basically, I was wondering why there weren’t more biodiversity-based interventions to support people living with HIV/AIDS. Well, our friend Arwen Bailey now informs us that this came up at a recent seminar given by Dr Tim Johns at Bioversity International HQ in Rome, and he said that at the International AIDS Conference in Mexico last August, there was “a feeling that clinical interventions have gone as far as they can go without addressing the environment and diets of affected people.” Apparently the session on biodiversity and AIDS was standing room only. Arwen found a couple of abstracts on the topic on the programme. Thanks, Arwen.
Downmarket
More on the effect of the economic downturn on agrobiodiversity. First, there’s a series of reports from markets around the world from the BBC. A couple include information on food. From Beijing:
In the face of the economic crisis, Ms Liu said Chinese people are going back to buying basic vegetables like Chinese cabbage and potatoes.
And from Crawford Market, Mumbai:
Even spice sellers are feeling the pinch. Jabbar Prajapati says the cost of saffron has rocketed from 60 rupees (£0.82 / $1.20) per gram last year, to 300 rupees (£4 / $6) per gram. “People are not ready to buy at those prices,” he says.
Also, The Economist has a story about “victory gardens” in Little Rock, Arkansas. The money quote:
Many gardeners are focusing on “heirloom plants” rare varieties from earlier times that do not appeal to agribusiness.
Wallacean agrobiodiversity overlooked?
There was an International Conference on Alfred Russel Wallace and the Wallacea in Makassar last December. Wallacea is of course one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, a link between the Sahul and Sunda landmasses. I was only able to find a sketchy programme on the internet, so I don’t really know in detail what was covered. In particular, was agricultural biodiversity included in the discussions? There have been fleeting mentions of “Long-term biodiversity monitoring including that of the Anoa dwarf buffalos on Buton (Phillip Wheeler, University of Hull)” as one of the papers. 1 But what about spices, for example? Does anyone know?
Incidentally, while looking into this I came across some great pictures of the house where Wallace lived on Ternate. Another site to add to the list for our long-planned tour of the Spice Islands, Robert?
Svalbard Global Seed Vault meet honours farmer
Norway Minister of Agriculture and Food Lard Peder Brekk praised Tay Gipo, a farmer who, despite having only four years of formal education, discovered a rice variety that proved to be high-yielding and pest resistant, the sample of which is among the thousands of seeds kept at the global seed vault.