Author: Jeremy Cherfas

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It’s a data-rich day: breakfast and beer

The Economist shows that the price of breakfast — if breakfast consists of coffee, toast (or some other wheat product) and orange juice — is going up. In other news, The Economist explains that while poor harvests are a factor, the price surge may be due as much to low interest rates as to low harvests. Investors are apparently looking for “investable markets”. Does that sound like speculation to You?

And, in celebration of International Beer Day 1 there’s this fine chart showing the rise of craft breweries in the US. The blogger from whom I picked up the story says this is all down to Jimmy Carter deregulating the beer industry in 1979, but commenters there are not so sure. They’re wrong, and the internets prove it. That’s politics for you.

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Sub-Saharan strategies for climate change adaptation

IFPRI has just published a review of the strategies that the 10 countries that make up ASARECA, the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa, plan to use to adapt to climate change. Only two strategies are common to all 10 countries: “the development and promotion of drought-tolerant and early-maturing crop species and exploitation of new and renewable energy sources”. Leave aside that the second strategy encompasses biofuels, and there’s still something else striking about the strategies.

Strangely, only one country recognizes the conservation of genetic resources as an important strategy although this is also potentially important for dealing with drought.

That country is Burundi, which we heartily applaud.

The point is not that each country should independently set out to conserve genetic resources; that would be inefficient and wasteful. But they ought at least to acknowledge the importance of conservation. And ASARECA could, at the very least, promote the International Seed Treaty and encourage members to prioritize collection of the most threatened crops and wild relatives. IFPRI could help by recognizing that genetic resources — agricultural biodiversity — underpin far more of the strategies than adaptation to drought.

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Farming and schoolchildren

I had really hoped to find something strikingly modern in a pamphlet linked by Marion Nestle, so that I could challenge you all to guess when it was written. Alas, it is too steeped in the language and context of its time. In 1917 John Dewey, the noted psychologist, educator and general all-around thinker, was urging the schools of America to encourage pupils to garden.

There will be better results from training drills with the spade and the hoe than from parading America’s youngsters up and down the school yard. 2

He adduces many convincing arguments which could, with a minor rewrite, be deployed today. Indeed, Nestle makes the connection between child nutrition bills “languishing in [the US] Congress” and Dewey’s exhortations. My question is: did they work then? A quick search reveals that Dewey’s ideas about experiential learning influenced at least a few current school gardens. However, there’s no easily-unearthed evidence that American schools took up farming and garden in 1917-18. Now if only Dewey had had an impact pathway.