Gary Paul Nabhan

The market under the tree where man was born

May 21, 2010

Gary Nabhan, who lectures tonight (21 May 2010) in Rome, continues his exploration of the markets Vavilov visited in Ethiopia. Pictures here. As we descended down endless switchbacks from the plateau above the gorge, we could see the towers of the cathedral [of Debre Libanos] well ahead of us, but did not catch a glimpse [...]

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Geographic hopscotch

May 19, 2010

Collecting biodiversity in the markets remains an efficient practice, and so it was when Gary Nabhan and David Cavagnaro followed Vavilov to Ethiopia. For several days, we played a game of geographic hopscotch, trying to retrace the path of Vavilov’s caravan from market to market, from Ankober and Debre Birhan overlooking the Great Rift Valley [...]

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How they make enjera: “flapjacks on steroids”

April 5, 2010

To see the care with which the “flat-cakes” called enjera are made and served is to be reminded that this food is something of a cultural keystone for Ethiopians. … [H]ours before enjera cakes are put on the grill, the teff flour is mixed with water and a special set of spices. Next, that batter [...]

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The diversity of teff

April 2, 2010

Despite endless efforts by development agencies to get Ethiopians to grow grains other than teff, roughly fifty million Ethiopians still use enjera as their daily bread, consuming close to 1.6 million metric tons of teff flour a year. Just as no two displays of vegetables and sauces on enjera are alike, no two teff fields [...]

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Teff bounces back

March 31, 2010

Teff is the millet-like cereal used to make Ethiopia’s national dish, enjera — an enormous, delicious crepe on which dozens of different vegetables, sauces, and condiments are placed. Over the long haul, Ethiopian farmers clearly gained more resilience in their crops by using a diverse mix of locally adapted teff varieties than by investing in [...]

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Famine revisited

March 19, 2010

Twenty years on it is possible to look back on Ethiopia’s food catastrophes of the 1980s and derive some interesting lessons that could not have been apparent to Vavilov. The next few posts will do so. All of Dr Melaku’s previous work had perfectly positioned him to deal with the impact of the 1984-85 famine, [...]

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Retracing Vavilov’s journey through Ethiopia

March 17, 2010

Today being Gary Nabhan’s birthday, it seems only fitting that he should take up the story. Though neither first nor the most perilous, the trip was easily the most productive of scientific expeditions to Ethiopia up until its time, in terms of its success in gathering seeds for future selection and use, in generating ideas [...]

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The cosmopolitan weeds of the horticultural world

February 12, 2010

Globalization of the Siwan food economy certainly began some time ago, but it appears that the homogenization of Siwan horticulture with that of the rest of the Mediterranean has lagged far behind that of other desert oases. Indeed, when Vavilov visited the French horticulturist Louis Trabut in Algiers in the summer of 1926, Trabut had [...]

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A measure of resilience

February 10, 2010

With Vavilov poised to enter Abyssinia, we rejoin Gary Paul Nabhan, at Siwa Oasis because Vavilov couldn’t be. One key factor [in fostering the conservation of agricultural diversity in the oasis] is that the traditional mix of crops grown within a multi-storied oasis garden offers Siwans a measure of resilience that industrial monoiculture of grains [...]

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Commercial cultivars come to Siwa oasis — and increase agricultural biodiversity

February 3, 2010

Next to dates, olives have long been the second-most important perennial crop in Siwa. The Hamed olive from Siwa is world-renowned, and yet in recent years, European investors have introduced into Siwa many Kalamata trees from Greece and other cultivars from Spain. Because Egyptian labor costs far less than that in Southern Europe, these investors [...]

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