Song of the Rolling Earth - Science Forum

Gustav Stresemann Institut (GSI)

Sitting in a friends kitchen and preparing for the Science Forum in Bonn at the Gustav Stresemann Institut “Nutrition and health outcomes: targets for agricultural research” Science Forum (CGIAR). 23.09. – 25.09.2013. 

I came across these words in Leaves of Grass. It inspires a kind of divine, deeply contented laziness and contentedness. Content to sit here and drink tea and feel confident that the benefit to the world will be greater than that of my effort to head out into the chilly streets and off to the conference...

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, BOOK XVI, A Song of the Rolling Earth, Part 3

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Each man to himself and each woman to herself, is the word of the
past and present, and the true word of immortality;
No one can acquire for another—not one,
Not one can grow for another—not one.

The song is to the singer, and comes back most to him,
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him,
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back most to him,
The theft is to the thief, and comes back most to him,
The love is to the lover, and comes back most to him,
The gift is to the giver, and comes back most to him—it cannot fail,
The oration is to the orator, the acting is to the actor and actress
not to the audience,
And no man understands any greatness or goodness but his own, or
the indication of his own.

Read more about the what is happening at GSI and related work (Lee et al. 2011; Witney 2008; 2011ab; 2012; Whitney et al. 2012).

Further reading

Lee, Jeung Hyoung, Hyun Sun DiMatteo Jo, Susanne Padel, Robert Anderson, Marco Schlüter, Francis Blake, Katsushige Murayama, et al. “Government Policies for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture with a Focus on the Asian Pacific Region.” In Special Workshop; Government Policies for the Promotion of Organic Agriculture with a Focus on the Asian Pacific Region, 17th IFOAM OWC, South Korea, edited by Cory Whitney, 97. Seoul, South Korea: Ministry of Food Agriculture, Forestry & Fisheries, Republic of Korea, 2011.

Whitney, Cory. “A Survey of Wild Collection and Cultivation of Indigenous Species in Iceland and the Faroe Islands.” MSc, University of Kassel, 2011. Kobra (University of Kassel’s Repository und Archive).

———. “Conservation Ethnobotany in the North Atlantic.” Non-Wood News; NWFP Digest, 2011. Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. “Nordic Ethnobotany and Conservation.” NWFP News: Non-Wood Forest Products, 2012. Food and Agriculture Organization.

———. “Small Is Beautiful; How Local Organic Can Steer Us Away From Catastrophe.” Ecology & Farming, 2008. Ecology & Farming.

Whitney, Cory, J. Gebauer, and M. Anderson. “A Survey of Wild Collection and Cultivation of Indigenous Species in Iceland.” Human Ecology 40, no. 5 (2012): 781–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-012-9517-0.

 

Nordic ethnobotany and conservation

Hotspots of biodiversity continue to be the focus of conservation efforts and ethnobotany explorations around the world. This makes sense since hotspots are the places that harbor the majority of the world's species. However, loss of species and habitats also happens in “cold-spots” of biodiversity such as Iceland and the Faroe Islands. I happen to be from one of these cold-spots and have witnessed a big loss of biodiversity in my lifetime. 

I used the opportunity of my Masters Thesis work at University of Kassel, Witzenhausen to find out about more about how other people from cold-spots use native biodiversity and if there is any relationship between use and conservation. I was inspired by David Quammen's ideas about Island Biogeography, so eloquently expressed in his book 'Song of the Dodo' and by Karl Hammer's various articles and books on the ethnobotany of Italian Islands. 

My 'explorations', if I can call them that, took place back in 2009 but have since been published in the journal Human Ecology as well as the open access archive Organic eprints. I thought it might be a good idea to share a bit about them here for any interested friends.

Icelanders and Faroese live in fragile ecosystems that have been changed since the Vikings cut many of the forests and then introduced rooting and grazing of livestock changing the forests to grazing lands around 1,000 years ago. Today there are many conservation minded islanders that are attempting to generate a more sustainable relationship with their environment. I was hosted by the people of Slow Food Iceland and Terra Madre Nordic to name a few and funded by the Partridge Foundation and my alma mater College of the Atlantic. I spent the summer of 2009 learning from Icelandic and Faroese wild collectors about their use of plants as well as algae and fungi for food and medicine. 

Some of the species like the Angelica, Birch and Icelandic Moss are used by many people. These are important and their habitats are often conserved by the people who like to use them.

A lot of the people I spoke with feel that the potential exists for a more diverse harvest and for sustainable management (e.g. Organic certification). Also spreading knowledge about the use of these species can increase their cultural conservation. This seems to be largely about food, which appears to be paramount for increasing the cultural importance of a species.

Organic eprints http://orgprints.org/22897/

Human Ecology doi 10.1007/s10745-012-9517-0

-----
Here is a regularly updated list of other things Cory writes

Toward Organic Asia and the organic and conservation movements of the Mekong

As Chöngyam Rinpoche said: 

"Better never to start...

Once you have started better to finish"

The Toward Organic Asia (TOA) meeting at the Social Policy and Ecology Research Institute (SPERI) could yield some great things for young organic farmers in the Mekong. Young farmers will go from Vietnam to Thailand to see Uncle Ti's farm and the Pacanho minority community to see models for sustainable agriculture. SPERI will join the meeting at the Findhorn Ecovillage and take a leading role in capacity building for young farmers in the region within the TOA cooperative framework. Three indigenous youth will come from Myanmar and a group of farmers will come from Laos to the Human Ecology Practice Area (HEPA) for training.

The Organic and conservation movements of the Mekong are in need of more cooperation and real support. The Organic movement is all still very small, vague, and more or less lost on the average person here. Most tragically it is lost on the farmers and sustainable wild collectors who need attention and support.  

The idea behind the TOA is beautiful but sadly the Mekong region has a long long way to go to get such a conservation and sustainable agriculture movement off the ground. TOA was brought forth by the School for Wellbeing to offer a network for sustainability movements in the region so that they can move ahead, but it has a long way to go, and a lot to learn before it can start to get there.

So, those of you in the Mekong, and in the rest of the world for that matter, please keep your eyes wide open for good farming and conservation practices, get to know those farmers, hunters and wild collectors and find out how you can help them directly. 

A poem from the Greenhorns:

Progress:

       less slavery
       less diesel
       less hunger+ obesity
       less cronyism and chemicals and corporate control

       (in the form of a brisk, conversion of our economy towards healthier mix).

       more jobs
       more rural prosperity, and dancing
       more layers on the land
       more soil biota
       more resilient economies based in places, in buildings, in relationships
       more entrepreneurship
       more faith in a more functional democracy

it may be hard, but it will not be boring.