Nibbles: Ethiopian gardens, Potato history, Early tobacco, Byzantine wine, American grapevines, Farmers & conservation

Lecture on the enset (and other things) gardens of Ethiopia coming up in November.
Book on the potato and governance tries to rescue small subsistence farmers from “the enormous condescension of posterity.”
(Really) ancient Americans may have smoked around the campfire. Tobacco, people, just tobacco.
Byzantine era wine factory found in Israel. Pass the bottle.
Meanwhile, half a world away, Indigenous Americans were using their own grapes in their own way.
Farmers and conservation of crop diversity.

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.