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| Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity |
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22/12/2009 |
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On the Roof of the World
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 There still exist pristine places without industry and pollution where people live in harmony with their environment. One of them is the autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan in Tajikistan. Though its area (about 65,000 sq km) extends over half the country, only 3% is habitable. Most of it is covered by the Pamir mountains, sometimes called the “Roof of the World”. The few villages are sited in valleys beside rivers and the population tries to cultivate every piece of available land. The mulberry is an important food for these valleys. Introduced from China via the Silk Route, it is perfectly adapted to the difficult mountain environment, where it grows between 1100 and 2400 meters (replacing crops such as wheat and barley which cannot be grown at these altitudes).
 There are now more than 60 varieties of mulberry in the Pamir region, the result of centuries of selection and adaptation. They can be eaten raw or transformed into jams, syrups or pikht, a flour which is usually mixed with other seeds and cereals.
The local inhabitants mainly grow mulberry for family consumption: in summer families put as much as 20-30 sacks of dried mulberry aside as a reserve for the winter. In the local culture the mulberry tree and fruit are associated with beauty: the berries are traditionally given to a couple to make their life sweeter, and before starting to build a new house, a mulberry tree would be planted.
 During some crisis periods, such as the Second World War or the extended civil war which afflicted the country until 1997, mulberry played a crucial role in providing the main nutrition for the local population.The community of mulberry producers from Khorog has been part of the Terra Madre network since 2004 and is working to defend the traditional Pamir customs of eating mulberry, which have significantly decreased in recent years with the spread of industrial products.
The Presidium was set up in collaboration with “Bioversity International”, a prominent international organization for the conservation of agricultural biodiversity, and was officially started following a recent visit by Victoria Smelkova (Slow Food) and Francesco Sottile (lecturer at the University of Palermo and collaborator with the Slow Food Foundation of Biodiversity). It currently includes 23 producers from the four districts of the autonomous province of Gorno-Badakhshan: Shugnan, Rushan, Yazgulyam and Vanch.
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