Fighting Famine With the Old Ways

The World Seed Fund c/o Abundant Life Seed Foundation is an NPO devoted to providing seeds for famine relief in areas where crops have been lost from various causes. (The address is listed on the Charities and Research page.)

Theoretically further seed will be produced as a result of these actions and hence the efforts may literally be a gift that keeps on giving.

Thus, small donations may continue to be significant over time, which is reassuring to those both skeptical of charities and relief efforts, and to those who are inclined to feel that they can't make a difference because they are economically challenged.

The World Seed Fund also accepts donations of seeds, with easy to meet criteria (ie organically grown) further allowing those hesitant or challenged to be significant contributors.

Some of the significant crops can be both especially easily grown, and also very prolifically seeded; a single grain Amaranth can yeild 250, 000 seeds.

There is also much room for growth, for agencies with a similar approach, and for those which can focus not only on helping to relieve famine by providing seed to replace lost crops, but for providing for where crops had not been possible, including reclamation of unproductive areas.

There is a large number of plants recognized in ethnobotany and economic botany, utilized by various indigenous peoples for food. Many are wild growing and have less of the requirements of cultivation.

Even though some are considered weedy or invasive, it is yet the same qualities that give them these tendencies that also make them in many ways ideal for reclamation where resources are most minimal. They tend to require neither significant watering nor fertilization, and may be less dependent on pollenators. They also tend to be vigorous, fast growers. Hence, with the smallest amount of human help if any, they can be reclaiming land: holding down topsoil and nutrients, buffering erosion, adding organic material, acting as living moisture collectors.

A great number of them have good arrays of utilarian properties many of which are recognized as "The Old Ways", that is they have been known for a long time. This makes them even further suited for relief efforts, and like the array of water-gathering resources that go neglected (Air Wells, Dew Ponds, etc), underscores how famine and such adversities have underlying causes not in an absence of resources, but in ignorance of resources. The victims of these tragedies perish at the hands of Myths of Scarcity.

Three typical plants that might be focussed on for such purposes might be the familiar pagan/ medical herbs, Mullein, Mugwort or Wormwood, and Amaranth.

The Artemisias which encompass Artemisia vulgaris (Mugwort) and Artemisia absinthinum (Wormwood) are typically drought tolerant and very prolifically seeded, reaching also 250,000 seeds per plant, and often in a single year.

Seeds of many specie of Artemisia, including Sagebrush, have been used by Native Americans as food. This value may extend to a great number more given further researches, which may consist of so little as trip to the right library or the right librarian.

There is already a citation for one California specie of Artemisia, in Las Pilitas Nursery's catalog/ California native plant handbook that it can fix nitrogen, a soil-enriching property normally thought of as occurring only in the legumes (pea and bean family of plants) and only with the help of certain bacteria (innoculants).

The silvery types of Artemisias not requiring fertilizers seems on the verge of being extended by some gardeners to many silvery plants in general; certainly this is encouraging that many of these may be this way because they may also possess the property of nitrogen fixation.

Mullein (Verbascum thapsus or Verbascum thapsiforme) like the Artemisias has served many uses including toiletries. While there may remain questions about treating parts of the plant as vegetable or the correct preparation of the plant, the generous amounts of tea sometimes used without reports of harm suggest the possibility that it is not a dangerous plant. Like many Artemisias, abundant stands growing in the wild already occur in many areas, very possibly where you yourself are right now.

Mulleins leaves have been used for shoes, for catching fish by stupefying or stunning them, as well as a hoarde of uses and could be used in emergency make-shift shelter or clothing along with the stalks which quickly develop woody properties. They have been used at times as walking sticks.

Working in a closely planted garden, I often have the preference to cut off a weed at the soil line rather than pull it out and risk taking the plants around it with it. When I cut a seeding mullein stalk back to the ground, with the same season it produced TWELVE new stalks from the base, raising the seed production total to around 3,500,000 seeds per plant! (Convert seeds to square feet of recalmation area). I already have suspicions that Amaranths may be willing to something comparable...

Our lowly bothersome Pigweed type of Amaranth has just as much a history of food use, (the seeds of this specie also being popped like corn as are some grain Amaranths). The nutritional value of Amaranths are highly praised, and the leaves are often eaten as greens as well.

These are but a few of the remarkable common oversights when strategizing against famine. Books on food plants of Native American Indians, books on Edible Wild Plants and Wild Medicinals will perhaps quickly yeild a great many more.

Surely you would have some dandelion seed to give away if someone asked?

But as surely as Ephesian Artemis represents the ediblity of the pine nut, so too should other plants such as her Artemisia specie, named for her, be scrutined as possible sources of sustainance. Praise the Old Ways!

Meanwhile, there is scacely a shortage of sagebrush. And with a little help...well, if I gave you two seeds of wormwood and you could only make every other one grow (that's 50%, an "F" in school!) what would you have in ten years time? (A: All of the most abundant element, hydrogen, in the known universe would theoretically be part of wormwood.) So if you're thinking about farming on Mars... perhaps it will help to have another think about farming on earth!

Again, silvery types of Artemisias grown by gardeners are regarded as not requiring fertilizers, and at least one specie fixes nitrogen.

Back Home Next

visitors since April 25, 1998

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page