인간의 육종으로 그야말로 엄청나게 변한 작물 가운데 하나로 바나나를 꼽을 수 있다.

지금은 비록 그 결과로 인해 멸종의 위기에 처해 있지만 말이다.


야생의 바나나는 꼭 으름처럼 생겼다.




728x90

'농담 > 씨앗-작물' 카테고리의 다른 글

여러 가지 밀  (0) 2019.06.05
고려인의 볍씨  (0) 2019.06.05
앉은뱅이 밀과 농림 10호, 그리고 소노라 밀  (0) 2019.04.25
방글라데시의 유전자변형 가지  (0) 2019.04.22
양분 결핍을 알리는 신호  (0) 2019.04.19

바나나 꽃.

한국에서는 바나나라는 작물이 재배되기 어려워, 늘 바나나의 열매만 보았지 꽃은 처음 찾아보았다.

물론 최근에는 해안성 기후인 지역의 시설하우스에서 점점 재배하는 사람이 늘어나는 것 같더라. 

 

아무튼 바나나의 꽃도 상당히 예쁘다는 걸 알았다.


특히 옥수수가 수염 하나하나에서 수정이 이루어져 옥수수알이 맺히듯이, 바나나는 꽃 안의 암술 하나하나에 수정이 이루어져 바나나 하나하나가 달린다는 걸 알았다. 너무 흥미롭다. 더 자세한 건 나중에 찾아봐야겠다.






728x90


These Madagascar bananas could be next.




During harvest last year, banana farmers in Jordan and Mozambique made a chilling discoveryTheir plants were no longer bearing the soft, creamy fruits they’d been growing for decadesWhen they cut open the roots of their banana plants, they saw something that looked like this:



A banana plant ravaged by Tropical Race 4.



Scientists first discovered the fungus that is turning banana plants into this rotting, fibrous mass in Southeast Asia in the 1990s. Since then the pathogen, known as the Tropical Race 4 strain of Panama disease, has slowly but steadily ravaged export crops throughout Asia. The fact that this vicious soil-borne fungus has now made the leap to Mozambique and Jordan is frightening. One reason is that it’s getting closer to Latin America, where at least 70% of the world’s $8.9-billion-a-year worth of exported bananas is grown. 


Randy Ploetz, professor of plant pathology at University of Florida who discovered Tropical Race 4, says it may already be in Latin America. “The story on the Mozambique situation was that workers brought over to establish the plantations—some of them were from Latin America,” he says. “And this is an insidious disease in that it can move… by soil-contaminated machinery, tools—that kind of thing.” 


Chiquita, the $548-million fruit giant with the world’s largest banana market share, is downplaying the risk. “It’s certainly not an immediate threat to banana production in Latin America [where Chiquita's crops are],” Ed Lloyd, spokesman for Chiquita, told the Charlotte Business Journal in late December, explaining that the company is using a “risk-mitigation program” to approach the potential spread. 


Even if it takes longer to arrive, the broader ravaging of the commercial banana appears inevitable. And we don’t need to imagine what that would mean for banana exports—the exact scenario has already happened. Starting in 1903, Race 1, an earlier variant of today’s pathogen, ravaged the export plantations of Latin America and the Caribbean. Within 50 years, Race 1 drove the world’s only export banana species, the Gros Michel, to virtual extinction. That’s why 99% of the bananas eaten in the developed world today are a cultivar called the Cavendish, the only export-suitable banana that could take on Race 1 and live to tell. 


Over the half-century it took to wipe out the Gros Michel, Race 1 caused at least$2.3 billion in damage (around $18.2 billion in today’s terms.) And that was in the commercial heart of global banana production. Tropical Race 4, by comparison, has damaged $400 million in banana crops in the Philippines alone. 


But the bigger difference now is that, compared its 20th-century cousin, Tropical Race 4 is a pure killing machine—and not just for Cavendishes. Scores of other species that are immune to Race 1 have no defenses against the new pathogen. In fact, Tropical Race 4 is capable of killing at least 80%—though possibly as much as 85%—of the 145 million tonnes (160 million tons) of bananas and plantains produced each year, says Ploetz.






And at $8.9 billion, bananas grown for export are only a fraction of the $44.1 billion in annual banana and plantain production—in fact, bananas are the fourth-most valuable global crop after rice, wheat, and milk. Where are the rest of those bananas sold? Nearly nine-tenths of the world’s bananas are eaten in poor countries, where at least 400 million people rely on them for 15-27% of their daily caloriesAnd that’s the really scary part. Since the first Panama disease outbreak, bananas have evolved from snacks into vital sustenanceAnd this time there’s no back-up banana variety to feed the world with instead.

+++++


Tropical Race 4′s global reach. Note that while Race 1 is in many more places, far fewer banana varieties are susceptible.Banana Research




Meet the Cavendish: the world’s multi-billion-dollar banana


Quick—think of a banana. Chances are good that, you’re imagining something closer to what’s on the right, and not the left:



On the left, Musa velutina, on the right the Cavendish.Left image by Flickr user Wendy Cutler; right image by 24oranges.nl.















That iconic yellow one is a CavendishAmericans love it so much that they buy more bananas than apples and oranges combinedIt might be the most famous, but Cavendishes make up less than half of the bananas grown around the world. The fuzzy, stubby pink bunch on the left—a Musa velutina—is an example of the incredibly diverse range of banana species that grow around the world.


Native to Assam, India, Musa velutinas are much softer and sweeter than Cavendishes. So why don’t we see Musa velutinas—or other species—in developed world supermarkets? Quality control is one; since they reproduce, the Musa velutinas vary in size and shapePlus, the pink fruit’s hard seeds can nick a fillingAnd they’re not as “productive” as Cavendishes—meaning, they produce less volume of fruit per plantCavendishes also take a long time to ripen and have tough exteriors, which allow them to travel far without going bad or getting banged up along the way.


These Philippines bananas don’t look much like the Cavendish.




In the same way that the Cavendish gets all the fame, brand names like Chiquita and Dole dominate the popular conception of the banana marketBut exports make up only 15% of global output; the rest is consumed by banana-producing nations or sold unofficially in regional marketsIn fact, the top two banana and plantain producers—India and China—don’t export at all, though they produce a combined 35% of the global yield.


The developed world prizes bananas as a food of convenience—it’s cheap, portable and reasonably healthyIn poor countries, however, bananas are often a basic source of nourishment for at least 400 million peopleThe average person in Uganda, Gabon, Ghana and Rwanda relies on bananas and plantains for more than 300 calories each day—around 16% of the UN’s nourishment threshold (and bear in mind that around 20% of the 74 million people living in those four countries are undernourished). Roughly 70% of all bananas consumed locally are vulnerable to Tropical Race 4.


And while millions of farmers feed their families with home-grown bananas, many millions more use income from growing them to buy other crops.Bananas are the most important export commodity for Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, and BelizeThey’re in the top three in Colombia, the Philippines, Guatemala, Honduras, and CameroonThat’s a lot of the developing-world economy reliant on a very vulnerable crop. “This disease is a problem, not only because of its potential impact on the price and availability of our favorite fruit, but also because it’s a life-changing event for the people in developing countries who rely on bananas as a staple food and incomes,” Alice Churchill, a scientist studying plant biology at Cornell University, told the Cornell Sun, “Those affected by [Panama disease] lose both their livelihoods and an important source of nutrition.”




The deadliest disease the banana world’s ever seen


Panama disease is so virulent that some call it the “HIV of banana plantations” (paywall). Here’s why it’s so lethal:

+

  • It strikes from inside the plant. The yellowing leaves are often the first thing farmers notice. That happens because Tropical Race 4 creeps into a banana plant’s roots, spreading up its vascular system and strangling the supply of water and nutrients. As the banana plant’s leaves wilt, it becomes harder and harder to conduct photosynthesis, leaving its fruits stunted. Eventually the plant simply dies.
  • Nothing can kill it. There are other big, bad banana-killers out there. Some, like Black Sigatoka and burrowing nematode worms, sound as nasty as they are (some, like a nefarious Asian virus called Bunchy Top, don’t.) But spray all of those with enough chemicals and they back off. Not so with Panama disease. once a plantation has it, nothing gets rid of it.
  • It’s stealthy. The thing clings to shoes, equipment, luggage, or whatever else touches contaminated dirt, making it incredibly contagious. All it takes is one clump of soil to spread Tropical Race 4.
  • It plays a long game. Dead plants leave behind spores, allowing the fungus to lie dormant in the ground for decades in wait for new crops to blight.
  • It’s confusing. The one proven prophylactic is rigorous quarantine, which Australia has implemented to good effect. A big worry with Latin America at the moment is that, because Tropical Race 4 causes symptoms that look like the old kinds of Panama disease—Race 1 and 2, which are still present in Latin America—farmers might not realize their crops are infected until it’s too late to quarantine, says University of Florida’s Ploetz.
  • And Tropical Race 4 is way deadlier than Race 1. When Race 1 wiped out the Gros Michel, the volume of other banana species also susceptible was small. How things have changed. As much as 85% of global banana output is vulnerable to Tropical Race 4.




Tropical Race 4′s route to domination."Fusarium Wilt of Bananas (Panama Disease),"













Before the Cavendish, there was Big Mike


The knitting of our fate with that of Tropical Race 4 began more than a century ago, with a banana far tastier than any most Quartz readers have ever had. While its famously creamy flavor made the Gros Michel—or “Big Mike”—a big hit around the Caribbean among small-time farmers, its tough, thick skin and its high yield are what landed this cultivar in cereal bowls and lunch bags far beyond the tropics.

Like all domesticated bananas, the vast majority of Gros Michel didn’t carry seedsSo how did they reproduce? You simply would cut off a chunk of a banana tree, plant it, and wait for your banana tree to sproutIn other words, the bananas eaten commercially are all clones.


Those qualities also gave rise of the industrialization of banana-growing, as they allowed scrappy American entrepreneurs to construct banana empires throughout Latin American rainforests, often building railroads to ports in exchange for long-term land rightsThese banana barons pioneered the industrial agriculture model familiar today, maximizing land, minimizing labor, and vertically integrating in order to send their product far and wide.


The docks of the United Fruit company in Honduras, 1954.





That let them sell Big Mikes for cheap—an important development given that in 1899, the fruit was still found mainly in posh hotels, where it often was accompanied with instructions on how to peel itThat next year, Americans ate around 15 million bunches of bananasWithin a decade that had surged to 40 million, making them more popular than apples and oranges, as Dan Koeppel documents in his book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World.At a time when apples and oranges were prohibitively expensive to most Americans, the banana was marketed for mass consumptionUnited Fruit successfully styled it as the fruit of the common man, its popularity reflected in the slapstick ubiquity of slipping on banana peels found in the films of Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and other comedians, as Koeppel points out.





From there, United Fruit ramped up marketing to further the banana’s American conquest, hiring doctors to endorse mashed bananas as baby food and setting up a “home economics department” to get images of bananas in front of housewives and in textbooksAfter its test kitchens struck upon the idea of the banana as the perfect breakfast on the go, the company began offering coupons on cereal boxes, linking bananas and breakfast cereal for the first time, writes Koeppel.



United Fruit marketing from the 1950s ingeniously targeted housewives and children. The image on the left appeared in Ladies Home Journal.Flickr user jbcurio on the left; Flickr user Phil Beard on the right (images have been cropped)



To ramp up production while preserving its margins, United Fruit began burnishing its famously bloody reputation for union-busting(A 1928 crackdown on striking United Fruit workers in Colombia inspired the massacre in Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude)The strategic importance of the crop meant that the troops of both Latin American dictatorships—the namesake of “banana republics”—and the US government often enforced United Fruit’s will on unruly workers.




The twilight of the Gros Michel


However, in 1903, United Fruit encountered an enemy that all the military interventions in the world couldn’t stop. It first showed up in Panama—a blight that wilted leaves and infected fruits until the entire plant toppled over and died, usually before it could bear any fruit. once it appeared, it laid waste to a region’s plantations, usually at a gradual pace, but sometimes with devastating speed. It needed only five years to wipe out all of Suriname’s banana plantations.


As you undoubtedly guessed, the pestilence in question is none other than Panama disease, Race 1. As whole plantations failed, United Fruit and others made the obvious choice: they picked up and moved somewhere else in Latin America.

But the blight followed. After it wiped out plantations in Costa Rica, Panama disease followed United Fruit to Guatemala. And then to Nicaragua, then Colombia and then Ecuador. By 1960, 77 years after it had appeared, Panama disease had wiped the Gros Michel out of every export plantation on the face of the planet.
+



Why was Panama disease unstoppable?


In the Gros Michel’s rise and fall, the banana industry struggled with the paradox that plagues all industrial agriculture crops. Natural reproduction is bad for short-term profits. The way to grow a consistent product at yields that achieve economies of scale is to stamp out the risks of diversity and imperfection that happens when genes reshuffle. To boost profit, you then grow that crop to the exclusion of less valuable species.


This is what’s called a “monoculture” or “monocrop,” the cultivation of a single plant species, usually on a massive, standardized scale. These things come at a cost, though. Just as their genetic similarity makes for cheap, large-scale production, it also prevents monocrops from adapting to attack from pests or disease. (Other disastrous consequences of monocrops include that farmers soak their crops in ever-increasing amounts of harmful chemicals and that this scale of growing is incredibly taxing on the environment.)
+



An eviction of Irish farmers during the potato famine of 1847-1850.




Another notorious monoculture disaster: the Irish Potato Famine


No episode in history illustrates this cost more nightmarishly than the Irish potato blight, “the biggest experiment in monoculture ever attempted and surely the most convincing proof of its folly,” as journalist Michael Pollan called it in his book Botany of Desire.

Introduced to Ireland two centuries earlier, the potato had by the early 1800s become a staple crop for farmers, a principal source of food for the poor and a major fodder crop for livestock. The vast majority of Irish farmers were planting a single potato species, the Irish Lumper, to the exclusion of other potato types. When a Mexican fungus-like microorganism hit Ireland, it encountered virtually no natural resistance, destroying around three-quarters of Ireland’s 1846 potato harvest. The blight eventually wiped out one million people between 1845 and 1852. As much as one-quarter of Ireland’s population either fled or died.

pollan makes an unnerving point about this tragedy. Many of the one million who died “probably owed their existence to the potato in the first place.” In other words, Ireland’s large-scale potato monoculture supported a bigger population than growing a more diverse range of crops would have; when that extra food disappeared, so did they.

+


Bananas for sale in Cuba.





So why was there no Latin American Banana Famine?

Panama disease’s scorched earth campaign was briefly terrible for United Fruit and for many Latin American economies. It was frustrating enough for US consumers to have inspired the song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” But a tropical reprise of the Irish potato famine it wasn’t.

There are many reasons for this, but a big one is simply that Lumper potatoes were an Irish staple; poor banana farmers in Latin America largely didn’t eat Gros Michel bananas—they were an export good, a nice-to-have snack in wealthy countriesWhen it came to feeding themselves, farmers in Latin America and the Caribbean had plenty of alternative bananas—species too thin-skinned to be exported or too weird-looking for Westerners to buySince Panama disease—remember, this is Race 1 we’re talking about—killed only the Gros Michel and a couple other types of bananas, plantains, as the type of banana commonly consumed in Latin America and Africa are known, were unscathed.

Plus, there was a huge yellow life raft in the form of the Race 1-resistant Cavendish, which Standard Fruit started rolling out in 1947. The rest of Big Banana eventually followed suit, ramping up plantations to produce more sterile Cavendish clones than ever. Soon it wasn’t just the multinationals; because Cavendish plants are so productive, farmers growing subsistence crops for local consumption took to growing them as well. Now around 60% of the 40 million tonnes of Cavendishes grown each year is eaten locally, not exported.


t might have tasted blander, but the Cavendish is way more productive than the Gros Michel."The Role of Demand in the Historical Development of the Banana Market," Marcelo Bucheli





How did Tropical Race 4 get to be so much deadlier than Race 1?


While United Fruit and Standard Fruit—which soon morphed into Chiquita and Dole, respectively—and other banana giants built booming businesses around Cavendish clones, Panama disease was busy too. The banana industry then did the fungus a huge favor: In the 1980s it launched huge Cavendish plantations in Malaysia, one of the ancient cradles of banana civilization. That’s where University of Florida’s Ploetz thinks Panama disease originally came from.

Even though it’s famed as the scourge of Latin America, the fungus is actually the natural foe of Malaysian wild bananasThat’s why moving banana production to Asia was such a bad move; wherever you find the most highly adapted wild bananas, you’re likely to find the most highly adapted diseases. For many millennia, an evolutionary bloodsport between Panama disease and wild bananas has raged on in Malaysian jungles. While the fungus made sure wild bananas passed on only the best genes for survival, wild bananas kept the fungus primed for lethal combatWhen the fungus was brought to Latin America in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel never stood a chance. This, after all, was a fungus born to kill the most evolved banana species out thereWiping out a sterile mutant with no natural resistance was a cakewalk.

The Cavendish was clearly made of tougher stuffBut that helped it only against Race 1, the strain of Panama disease that had been transplanted to Latin America more than a century agoIn the intervening years, the pathogen that stayed in Malaysia kept adapting and out-adapting Malaysian wild bananas.And that’s why Tropical Race 4 is so much more lethal: It’s a fungus with 100 extra years of banana-killing evolution under its belt.

Big Banana’s global conquest didn’t create Tropical Race 4. But it did help “select” it, says PloetzBy building its business on a monoculture, the big exporters made their species sitting ducks for constantly adapting strains of Panama disease. And by moving banana production around the globe, far beyond the species’ natural habitats, companies ensured that species became host for a vicious disease against which the vast majority of cultivated bananas had no defensesThe good news, relatively speaking, was that in the last 20 years it’s been confined to Asia and AustraliaBut its sudden appearance in Mozambique and Jordan last year puts it closer to devastating global banana and plantain production—in a way the world has never before seen.



A fruit market in Lahore.





Tropical Race 4 and a global banana famine


All this might seem alarmist, particularly given how slowly Panama disease typically spreads. Big Banana, for one, would agree with that. “This is something that this industry has dealt with for decades,” said Chiquita’s Ed Lloyd. “It’s not a ‘sky is falling’ sort of situation.”

To some extent, University of Florida’s Ploetz agrees. “Bananas aren’t going to go extinct—they’re not going to disappear,” he says. “What [Dole and Chiquita] have in their favor is that it’s not going to move through their plantation like wildfire… But the problem is its cryptic nature: once you have it you don’t know how widespread it is.”

The picture’s much different when you look beyond exported bananas






And while Chiquita and other big banana multinationals shrug off its threat to Latin America, it doesn’t sound like they’re taking into account the possibilities that Ploetz flags, such as the Latin American farmers setting up plantations in the affected Mozambique areaDid they scrub their shoes well enough? Time will tell.


Though the banana panic won’t hit tomorrow, the nature of Tropical Race 4 and the fact that scientists haven’t yet found a viable back-up banana to sub in for the Cavendish means an eventual production collapse is inevitable.


What might that look like? In the crude terms that Pollan invoked with the Irish potato famine, the population that owes much of its survival to cheap, productive banana plants is the one that will shoulder the impact when those plants dieIf the same huge numbers of the banana-eating global population are going to stay fed, the only viable solution at the moment may be genetic modificationOn that front, there are promising signs, though still nothing to take to the bankWhile some find the genetically modified alternative objectionable, it’s hard to argue against modifying an already pretty heavily genetically tweaked fruit given the scale of malnourishment or perhaps even starvation, if that’s what it comes down to.


But the GMO lightning rod distracts from the larger cautionary tale: Our reliance on monoculture to feed surging global populations is catching up with usInternational agricultural organizations are already scrambling to find new scourge-resistant substitutes for things like rice and potatoesIn fact, so dire are other global agricultural problems that Tropical Race 4′s onslaught doesn’t even get bananas near the top of priority list. “Getting support to develop new resistant bananas is really tough—there are already so many demands on the international agricultural community,” says Ploetz“There’s a lot of hunger in the world and bananas just have to get in line behind all those other big problems.”



http://qz.com/164029/tropical-race-4-global-banana-industry-is-killing-the-worlds-favorite-fruit/#/h/50988,1,2,3/

728x90


By Caity Peterson

You're hungry for pizza. Walking around the neighborhood, you find two pizzerias not far from each other. They're both selling pretty much the same thing - crust with cheese and tomatoes on top - and at the same price. But one offers you a free delicious ice-cold 2-liter soda to go with your hawaiian. That makes your choice easy, no?

Believe it or not, something similar is happening in Uganda. only we're not talking about pizza, and the choice is a bit more complicated.

The comestibles in question here are two of the country's most important agricultural commodities. one, coffee, makes up 20-30% of Uganda's foreign exchange earnings and creates a cash boom for smallholders once or twice a year. The other, banana, is the country's principle staple crop, providing a small, steady food harvest all year long. In fact, Uganda was the 2nd largest banana producer in the world in 2008, and the 11thlargest coffee producer.

By happy coincidence, both of these crops tend to grow at around the same altitude: from 800 to 2300 meters. Thus, considering growing human populations and farmers increasingly squeezed for space, it makes sense to grow them together, especially since coffee tends to produce more consistently when grown with a little bit of shade. Many farmers in Uganda are doing just that, intercropping banana and coffee to make good use of space in densely populated areas. Others are sticking with the old system or growing the two crops in separate plots, as used to be promoted by colonial extension services solely concerned with profits from the coffee cash crop and is often still promoted today, for apparent lack of a better option.

But which of these systems is actually the most beneficial for farmers? Until now, not much research has existed specifically targeting the relative advantages and disadvantages of different types of coffee growing systems. The result is that government agencies and other advisory bodies have trouble knowing what to promote, and farmers are even more in the dark.

Ongoing research by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Kampala, Uganda, in collaboration with other CGIAR centers (CIATICRAF, and CIFOR), has attempted to evaluate the benefits of different types of systems, including co-benefits for climate change adaptation and mitigation and implications for pest and disease incidence.
 They have found that banana-coffee intercrop systems have the potential to be the most beneficial for farmers because they leave the yield of the coffee crop virtually untouched, while providing a little something extra in the form of more food for their personal use. Essentially, by combining the two crops farmers are greatly increasing the total yield value of a single plot of land, even if the yield for individual crops doesn’t change much. Bananas are to coffee crops what our free soda is to pizzerias – it doesn’t change the pizza, but it’s a nice bonus nonetheless.

Furthermore, including bananas in the coffee system spreads the farmers’ risk. If one crop fails or is decimated by a disease, they can still get a harvest from the other. Ugandan farmers have reported that the shade from the bananas also decreases their coffee’s susceptibility to drought and extreme weather events due to climate change. The residues from the trees provide in-situ mulch which would otherwise cost them much capital and labor to bring in. They say bananas also motivate them to better manage their coffee crops during the first 3-5 unproductive years, because the bananas are producing even when the coffee is not. This is especially true for the female half of the community, which often doesn’t see the money from a coffee sale come back to the household but can use the banana harvest for home consumption.

There are trade-offs, of course. The intercrop system removes larger quantities of nutrients from the soil, and, in the long-term, coffee can eventually out-compete banana. The system can also require larger inputs of labor and capital at the outset. Accordingly, the success of intercrop systems will require identification of major production constraints – principally soil fertility – and the development of site-specific recommendations to address them.

Recently, the IITA team has been taking a more climate-centric focus to their crop system analyses, collaborating on the development of suitability maps for East African coffee crops, pests, and diseases and investigating the mitigation potential of the coffee-banana intercrop system. For more info on past and current IITA work in Uganda – and parallel projects on cocoa systems in Cameroon and Nigeria – check out the following resources:

See original story on CCAFs blog:  http://ccafs.cgiar.org/blog/uganda-coffee-and-banana-go-better-together


728x90

난 우리의 농업이 이러한 방향을 추구해서는 안 된다고 생각하는데, 세상은 이리로 간다. 환금작물이 아니라 식량작물 중심, 수출과 상업농 위주가 아닌 자급과 지역 먹을거리 중심의 농사가 되었으면 한다. 

---------




"농업은 새로운 가치 창출 산업이고 첨단 융·복합 산업(첨단기술·건강·관광·에너지)의 중심이다." (2009년 버락 오바마 미국 대통령)


최근 식량 위기, 먹을거리 안전성, 건강 등이 전 세계적인 화두로 떠오르면서 첨단 융·복합 산업으로서 농업의 가능성이 부각되고 있다. 젊은 귀농 층을 중심으로 농업의 새로운 가능성을 예견하고 비즈니스 마인드로 접근하는 형태가 많이 늘고 있다.

이들은 생태적 가치를 지향하며 자연 농법, 태평 농법, 삼무(三無) 농법, 탄소 순환 농법 등 새로운 농법의 시도를 두려워하지 않고 실험해 보고 있다. 또한 정보기술(IT) 활용 능력과 도시 네트워크를 통해 생산자 주도형 농산물 직거래라는 새로운 마케팅 방법도 확대하고 있다. 새로운 경영 기법의 도입과 함께 특화 작물로 새로운 시장을 개척하고 부가가치형 농산물을 재배해 억대 연봉을 창출하는 '강소농'도 속속 등장하게 됐다. 다양한 기능성을 갖춘 작물과 부가가치가 높은 농작물을 선택하는 것은 성공적인 귀농과 비즈니스 측면에서 핵심이라고 할 수 있다. 농촌진흥청 등 관계 기관 및 연구소 등에서도 유망 작물을 적극 발굴·개발하고 농업인들에게 소개하고 있다.

남미 고산 작물, 국내 고랭지 재배 가능

최근 떠오르고 있는 유망 작물을 살펴보면, 남미 안데스산맥의 고산지대에서 자라는 아마란스·퀴노아·야콘·아피오스 등이 있다. 이들 고산식물들은 특유의 탁월한 기능성이 있어 상품성이 높다. 농촌진흥청은 이들 작물들의 국내 고랭지 적응성과 실용성 등을 검토한 결과 고부가가치 식품 소재, 경관용 소재 등 다양한 소재로 활용할 수 있는 것으로 판단했다.

우선 야콘은 안데스 원산의 국화과 식물로 고구마 모양의 덩이뿌리(괴근) 형태다. 씹으면 아삭아삭하면서 배 맛이 나는 특성을 지녀 '땅속의 과일'이라고 부른다. 농진청 연구 결과 야콘 덩이뿌리는 건강 기능성 성분인 프락토올리고당이 많이 들어 있고 잎에는 만병의 근원인 활성산소를 제거하는 생리 활성 물질이 풍부하게 들어 있는 것으로 밝혀졌다.

야콘은 병해충의 피해가 크지 않고 화학비료 없이 유기 재배도 가능하다고 밝혀지면서 재배 면적이 급속히 늘고 있다. 야콘은 2010년 전국적으로 166ha 정도 재배돼 10년 전에 비해 재배 면적이 약 20배나 증가했고 단위면적당 소득도 높은 유망 작물로 꼽힌다.

또한 '아마란스'는 비름과에 속하는 1년생 식물로 과거 잉카시대부터 '신이 내린 작물'로 불렸다. 단백질 함량이 15.7%로 매우 높고 라이신·타우린 등 균형 잡힌 아미노산 구성으로 영양학적 관점에서 완전식품에 가깝다는 평가다. 국내 고랭지에서 시험 결과 10a당 300kg 이상의 다수확이 가능해 새로운 식품 작물로 유용할 것이라는 분석이다. 기능성 곡물류인 '퀴노아', 땅속에서 열리는 콩 '아피오스', 형형색색의 덩이뿌리 작물인 '올루코' 등도 개발 가능성이 검토되고 있다.

약용식물도 부가가치가 높은 작물로 알려져 있다. 장뇌삼은 가장 경제적이고 환경적인 작목으로 주목받고 있다. 장뇌삼은 숲속에 한 번 심어 놓으면 수확할 때까지 손볼 필요가 없어 노동력이 들지 않고 비료나 농약을 줄 필요가 없는 데다 높은 소득을 기대할 수 있기 때문이다.

지난 13년간 장뇌삼을 연구해 온 상주대 이동섭 교수는 서울시립대 우수영 교수, 의성군청 김택동 씨와 함께 연구팀을 만들어 산속에 직접 씨를 뿌리고 싹이 나는 것을 조사했다. 이 교수는 "숲은 그 자체가 적당한 그늘과 토양 조건을 갖추고 있기 때문에 물 빠짐이 좋은 활엽수림이나 혼유림에서는 어디에서든 장뇌삼이 잘 자라는 것으로 나타났다"고 밝혔다.

산에서 자란 장뇌삼은 7년이 지나면 강한 향을 내는데 이때부터 약효가 좋은 것으로 알려져 있다. 이 교수는 농민들이 장뇌삼을 재배할 수 있도록 지금까지 축적된 장뇌삼 재배 기술을 농가에 보급할 계획이다.

제주특별자치도 농업기술원은 제주에 적합한 10대 약용작물을 선정했다. 선정된 약용작물은 백수오·백도라지·방풍·석창포·반하·황금·우슬·작약·하수오·백출 등이다. 약용작물 선정 협의회의 학계·한약계·유통업체·농업인 등은 "국내 생산 농가가 거의 없는 반하, 국내 수요가 높고 제주 지역 재배가 가능한 작약이 소득원으로 유망할 것"이라고 설명했다.

한편 기후변화로 인해 아열대식물의 도입도 적극적으로 검토되고 있다. 강릉시는 기후변화에 대응해 2009년부터 구아바·무화과·감귤 등 아열대식물 생산력 검증 시험을 벌이고 있다. 무화과는 우량 품종 지역 적응 선발을 마치고 현재 사천면 사기막리, 구정면 금광1리 등 3개 농가에 묘목 1000그루를 보급했다. 또 감귤과 왜성 바나나는 지역 적응 시험 중이며 올리브와 석류, 커피나무를 기후변화 대응 유망 과종으로 선발했다. 또한 블루베리 묘목을 일시에 대량으로 증식할 수 있는 조직 배양 연구가 진행되고 있어 대량 증식 체계가 확립됐다.

제주 망고, 수입산보다 3배 비싸게 거래돼

우리나라 온난화 최전선 지역인 제주에서는 이미 열대·아열대 과수 재배가 정착 단계에 접어들었다. 현재 제주에서는 95농가가 35.8㏊의 농지에서 바나나·파인애플·망고·용과·파파야·아보카도·구아바·아테모야 등 다양한 열대·아열대 과일을 재배해 높은 소득을 올리고 있다.

제주 망고는 특히 뛰어난 품질로 수입산보다 3배 이상 비싼 값에 거래될 정도로 큰 인기를 누리고 있다. 과일과 함께 아티초크·오크라·차요테·인디언시금치 등 열대 및 아열대 채소류도 농진청 온난화대응센터에서 적응성을 연구 중이다. 이 가운데 아티초크와 인디언시금치는 소규모지만 일부 농가가 재배를 시작해 새로운 소득 작물로 부상하고 있다.

해외 수출을 겨냥한 고품질 농산물 재배도 수익 확보에 좋은 방법이다. 고품질 농산물에 대한 수요가 일본·중국·러시아 등 인접 국가에 약 2억 명에 걸쳐 시장을 형성하고 있는 것으로 파악되고 있다. 최근 세계 최대 농산물 시장인 유럽까지도 한국 농산물의 시장으로 떠오르고 있다. 강원도에서 생산된 백합 절화 한 품목만으로도 연간 200억 원 규모로 일본에 수출하고 있고 파프리카·장미·밤호박·토마토·양배추·브로콜리·칼라·리시언더스 등도 대일 수출에 유망한 작물로 꼽히고 있다.

난류는 우리나라의 수출 화훼 산업을 선도하는 수출 효자 품목으로 수출액은 2000년 4422달러에서 2009년 1만6518달러로, 약 3.7배 이상의 증가율을 보이고 있다. 난류 중 팔레놉시스는 수출 유망 작물로 각광받고 있다. 농진청은 2009년 팔레놉시스 품종 1000주를 미국에 시범 수출했으며 올해 미국 수출량이 급증하게 됐다. 팔레놉시스는 미국 시장에서 분화류 중 소비량이 가장 많은 품목이지만 전량 수입에 의존하고 있어 우리나라의 주요 수출 전략 작물이 될 가능성이 높다.

농진청 귀농귀촌종합센터 김부성 지도관은 "작물의 종류는 매우 다양하고 농사 방법에는 정해진 것이 없기 때문에 재배할 작물로 어떤 게 좋다고 권하기는 힘들다"며 "최근 새 귀농 층이 새롭고 특이한 작물을 고르는 경우가 많은데 매우 모험적이 될 수 있다"고 지적했다. 그리고 "우선 귀농 희망하는 지역에서 많은 사람들이 재배하는 것을 고르는 것이 좋다. 기술적 조언, 판매 경로 확보 등이 용이하기 때문이다. 3~4년 정도 주요 작물의 재배 경험을 가진 후 새로운 작물에 도전해 보는 것을 권한다"고 조언했다.

이진원 기자 zinone@hankyung.com


728x90

안산 다문화거리를 찾았다.

말 그대로 정말 다양한 사람들이 오고가는 거리.

그 사람들만큼 다양한 볼거리가 가득하다.

그 가운데 내 눈길을 끄는 것은 농산물.

처음 보는 특이한 것들 위주로 사진을 박았다.

 

 

이건 주인아저씨께 물어보니 오이 종류라고 하는데 정확한 이름은 모르겠다.

혹시 누구 아시는 분? 

 

 

 

 

과일의 왕자라 불리는 두리안. 썩은 내가 난다고 하는데 껍질을 벗겨 보지 않아서 알 수 없다.

 

 

 

 

다음은 바나나. 노란 바나나가 아니라 푸른 바나나다. 한 번 사올 걸 그랬다. 나중에 가면 사서 먹어 봐야지.

 

 

 

 

 

아! 고수다. 이게 바로 고수다. 씨만 보았는데, 그리고 음식에 넣을 때 잘라 놓은 모습만 보았는데, 온전한 형태가 이렇게 생겼구나. 이건 동남아시아인들이 주로 먹는다. 

 

 

 

 

청완두. 꼬투리 채로 먹는다는 완두. 중국인들이 좋아한다. 

 

 

 

 

동부. 딱 보니 갓끈동부처럼 꼬투리 채로 볶아 먹겠구나 하는 걸 알 수 있었다.  

 

 

 

 

마지막으로 단콩. 달달해서 단콩인지, 짧아서 단콩인지는 모르겠다. 장사하시는 분들은 살 게 아니면 친절히 대답해 주지 않는다. 장사에 방해가 된다고만 생각하셔서...

 

728x90

'농담 > 雜다한 글' 카테고리의 다른 글

태국 음식과 술  (0) 2010.06.17
안산역 앞 "베트남 고향식당"  (0) 2010.06.17
안산 터미널  (0) 2010.06.17
2010년 6월 15일 번개모임  (0) 2010.06.15
밤꽃 향기  (0) 2010.06.13

+ Recent posts