Luigi Guarino

January 19, 2008

Heal thyself

Medicinal plants in trouble.

January 17, 2008

More trouble in Naples

Brucillosis threatens mozzarella. Camorra unavailable for comment.

January 16, 2008

Feeding livestock

New Agriculturist focuses on livestock feed and fodder systems.

January 16, 2008October 10, 2017

Indian biodiversity information

India is to build a national biodiversity information system. Will it include agricultural biodiversity? Not clear from the short article in The Hindu, but I hope to be surprised. The National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources does have relevant databases (though not all online yet)…

January 16, 2008November 28, 2017

FAO developing forestry strategy

…and you can download the discussion document and comment on it here. Via ~~Non-Wood Forest Products Newsletter~~¹.

Fresh Nibbles

Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from the university’s cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cocoa’s traditional growing belt.
And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.

Published on August 16, 2026