I like to try to mention all initiatives promoting non-commercial seeds, large and small. Peter Brinch recently sent me an email telling me about his initiative and website, Open Pollinated Seeds in the UK, promoting the use of OP seeds as well as seed saving, seed swapping and plant breeding. It all sounds great to me!
Nairobi Matatu Blog
James blogs under the name of Wambururu, and writes a blog about matatus in Kenya’s capitol city Nairobi. Matatus are privately owned minivans that provide public transportation in the city. They are a sort of inexpensive shared taxi that run fixed routes. They are often in an uncertain state of repair, driven by someone with no particular qualifications, not much legal oversight, and blamed for causing many accidents.
Okay, so the next question of course is what does a matatu blog have to do with plants and a gardening blog like this one? Like a lot of bloggers, James wants to make the world around him a better place, and writes about some difficult things.
James is not afraid to criticize the habits of other matatu drivers, or the system that lets anyone who pays a bribe get a license to drive one. He’s spoken frankly about bribes paid to the police, and protection money paid to gangs. James also wants the world to know that not all matatu drivers are bad! He’s recently taken on upcoming elections in Kenya, and the tribal violence that killed about 1000 people and ruined the lives of many in the previous 2007 elections. He’s written about an acquaintance who was jailed for nearly 10 years for kissing a woman. The real crime being he was from the wrong tribe, in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was framed for doing something he didn’t do.
James has been featured on Al Jazeera, and more recently on the BBC. You can find links to these on his blog. I found him via the BBC.
I think all of us who want blogs to help make the world a better place will find James’s blog interesting. I think his blog offers a very unique insight from the perspective of a Nairobi matatu driver. I certainly wish him lots of success for the future.
Wars on Drugs
It’s old news, and all over the Internet by now, but if you haven’t seen it there’s this great article on the dangers of collecting opium antiques.
I often think so much can be learned by looking to our past mistakes. It’s a shame as a people we aren’t so good at not making the same mistakes over and over, but there’s still a lot to be learned from the past. I think you can really understand something about today’s drug wars, by looking at how it all started with opium.
Reading the above article led me to one written a few years ago by Michael Pollan, on what NOT to do with the poppies you grow in your own garden.
Finally, compliments of Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, here’s an article on the Alberta police helping to keep the world safe by eradicating the daisy, er marihuana .
Resilient Seed Fliers
Resilient Seed was a film made by Ella von der Haide of the seed saving event in Brussels in April 2011. I’ve posted about this earlier. Booklets to accompany the film have just been released, and you can find them here:
Versions of the film corresponding to these languages can be found on her YouTube channel.
While they are oriented towards Europeans, I think the film together with the booklet are a really good introduction to what the seed saving movement worldwide is all about, together with some very practical information on how to organize your own seed swap.
In the background of the film preview picture above, you can see the backs of Søren and me giving away seeds that day. He has the red shirt, and me the white.
Greek Olive Oil Soap
I did a post several days ago about some Greek Olive Oil I bought at a farmers market, fairly direct from the farm and with a picture of the farmer on the label.
Completely by coincidence, I was looking for hand soap the other day.
There’s a local shop I used to like buying my soap from, a natural food store. Years ago it used to be a sort of food cooperative, but was bought by a larger chain. Over the years they’ve been slowly going from selling local organic foods to selling yuppie vitamins and certified organic processed foods. While they’re still a local business, it’s getting harder and harder to justify buying anything from them any more. Until a few months ago I bought my soap from them, as they sold a locally made, reasonably priced, relatively natural and vegetable based soap. Lately they seem to be having troubles with their suppliers, don’t have much in stock, and the prices are going up. They’ve also been trying to push their customers onto more expensive and processed alternatives.
As much as it really annoyed me to do so, I started looking on Amazon and thinking about an order I could make with free shipping… In my case there’s no local Amazon, the closest is Germany, but they often have free shipping to here.
I really didn’t want to order my bath soap this way, so I started looking for some alternatives that were more local.
I found Dendres who, at least according to their website, are Greek farmers who sell their olive oil and olive oil products via a warehouse in the Netherlands. As you can see from the picture above, I did get my order from them as expected. It was cheaper than anything else I found anywhere, even though I did pay for shipping. Beyond this and what it says on their website, I don’t know anything about them.
Anyone else have any good examples of buying online directly from farmers? How about distribution networks that help farmers sell their products directly in this way? It would be nice to promote and more easily find farmers like this. It would also be nice if there was some sort of certification, to prevent non-farmers from claiming to be farmers, something like the way farmers markets are sometimes certified in the US as having only farmers selling their own products or perhaps those of another certified farmer.
Are there any farmers out there who sell your own products this way?
