Edible Tulip

Delicious Reading

 

No, it's not the latest Newsweek (with Obama on the cover) dishing all the behind the campaign scenes gossip, and detailed backstabbing info on the "Wasilla Hillbillies" that I find myself embarrassingly curious about despite not even knowing (caring?) about a certain pistol-packing bible-thumping modern day Annie Oakley four months ago. Whatever.

What I do want to mention is that the New Yorker Food Issue is now on the newstands, and our hometown (Toronto) heroes, Naomi Duguid and Jeffrey Alford, of cookbook world legend for such great publications as Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through South East Asia and Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Tradition among several others, are the focus of a profile piece by Jane Kramer. It's a wonderful look into the inspiring and daunting life of true intrepid travelers. They write to travel, as Naomi puts it; not the other way around. Their cookbooks are anthropological wonders revealed in field notes and photographs and telling the stories of the people they meet and the adventures they seek in journal style writing - accessible, engaging, historical, and full of wonder. They travel as close to the earth as possible and with as little baggage, literally and figuratively as possible, hitching rides of motorcyles and criss crossing the dusty villages of rural China ending up in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, all the while, strapping 2 young kids on their backs for the journeys, packed in alongside the camera equipment. Theirs is a life so many of us romanticise but of whom so few of us have the courage to truly live it.

Other good reads in the magazine include a piece by Calvin Trillin on who makes the best BBQ in Texas; an article by Burkhard Bilger on "extreme beer", and in the typical NYer erudite style of making a boring-sounding idea (a piece on one of a hundred and twenty-two people in the world to have been certified as a Master Bladesmith, i.e. a guy who likes knives) rivetting.

Grain

I was led to the website of GRAIN after a visit with a friend who mentioned her friend who lives in Montreal and does research on native seeds - their preservation and politicisation and the ongoing battle with GMO crops.

If you are interested in community involvement and control over agricultural biodervisity then Grain is definitely a website you should spend time scrolling through. It is based out of Spain but has an international reach and team of staff.

They describe themselves best in the about section on their website:

"GRAIN is an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) which promotes the sustainable management and use of agricultural biodiversity based on people's control over genetic resources and local knowledge.

GRAIN was established at the beginning of the 1990s to launch a decade of popular action against one of the most pervasive threats to world food security: genetic erosion. The loss of biological diversity, undermines the very sense of "sustainable development" as it destroys options for the future and robs people of a key resource base for survival. Genetic erosion means more than just the loss of genetic diversity. In essence it is an erosion of options for development. Central to our approach is the conviction that the conservation and use of genetic resources is too important to leave to scientists, governments and industry alone. Farmers and community organisations have nurtured genetic diversity for millennia, and continue to do so. Any effort in this field should take their experience as a starting point.

Now entering its 16th year of work, GRAIN has witnessed and contributed to an enormous and ever-growing momentum of international concern, debate and action to redress the imbalances in the management and control of biodiversity. What started as a small and Euro-centred outfit in the early 1990s, has now grown into a dynamic and mature organisation with thirteen staff in nine countries and spread across 5 continents, carrying out a broad and challenging programme on local and global management of genetic diversity and the impacts of biotechnology on world agriculture, particularly in developing countries.

This evolution would not have been possible without permanent efforts to strengthen the growing network of partner groups in every continent of the world. The foundations of our work lie in the daily networking, communications and information activities of our small organisation. It is on this basis that we are able to strengthen our capacities and those of our many partners the world over in mobilising popular concern and constructive action for the safeguarding of the world's genetic diversity."