Jeremy Cherfas

February 7, 2008April 29, 2009

Time for a little learning?

This should be interesting. (Although I cannot for the life of me see how to make a picture appear in the black box below. Trust me; click.)

According to the blurb, “Unlike old-fashioned DVDs, this interactive Digital Learning Tool (iDLT) puts you smack in the driverâ€™s seat. From the moment you click â€œGet Started,â€ your hosts, outdoorsy Olivia and tech-savvy Seth, are ready to take you around the world to discover agricultural biodiversity”.

Alas, from the clip all I learned was how jolly clever Olivia and Seth and the DVD makers are. But the nice people at PhotoSynthesis Productions have said they’ll send us a copy so we’ll be able to report in more depth. In the meantime, have any of you seen it? What did you think?

February 6, 2008February 6, 2008

An archaeodentist’s take on domestication

Jason at Hominim Dental Anthropology (a bit of a mouthful; hahahaha) has been taking a look at some recent papers on domestication. The papers are, by his own admission, nothing new. We’ve covered some of them ourselves here. What I thought was interesting was the stress on the timing and duration of domestication and Jason’s views of what constitutes “nature” and “natural”. He seems, to me, to be a bit confused as to whether Homo sapiens (just another unique species, as Rob Foley puts it) is a part of nature, or apart from nature and yet with its (our?) own nature.

February 5, 2008February 5, 2008

Fresh Nibbles

What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…

Published on April 4, 2025

Author: Jeremy Cherfas

Time for a little learning?

An archaeodentist’s take on domestication

New book on globalization

India slams biopiracy

Favourite things