Nibbles: Neolithic farmers, Minoan DNA, Cretan food, Olive history book, Organic dreams, Fairtrade experiment, Value chains, Jamaican breadfruit exports, Climate smart successes

Neolithic farmers spread into Europe by sea.
And it looks like the ones who got to Crete eventually gave rise to the Minoans.
And ate food not unlike what Cretans ate up to a hundred years ago.
Well of course the olive is important to all that.
Ten thousand years later, we find that organic is an impossible dream.
And Fairtrade may or may not work.
But value chains will make you free. Although that’s easier said than done.
And you have to be climate-smart to boot. Really, who’d be a farmer, in the Neolithic or now.

A paean to diverse diets is just what we all need.
And another one, from the MIT Technology Review of all places.
Menawhile, there’s only one reference to dietary diversity in the World Bank’s investment framework for nutrition.
Maybe you have to quantify that diversity before you can save it? Now where have I heard that before?
Meanwhile, Europe reports on biodiversity-friendly farming practices. Does that include the biodiversity of the actual crops? Perhaps surprisingly, yes!
You want biodiversity-friendly farming practices? Talk to Indigenous people. The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched an e-consultation on “Preserving, strengthening and promoting Indigenous Peoples’ food and knowledge systems and traditional practices for sustainable food systems.”
There’s diversity in asparagus too.
Genebanks can help with those biodiversity-friendly practices, diverse diets and rops and Indigenous practices.
Even big international genebanks.
Even the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
But some are in trouble.
Though others are coming back.