Commodity

Nibbles: Wild wheat, Saving coffee, Wild rice, 3 Sisters video, Blenheim honeybees, NDCs

The ancient, wild, Georgian roots of bread wheat gluten.
Wild relatives could help us save coffee. But we knew that. Right?
Photosynthesis in wild rices responds more quickly to light changes than in the crop, stomata not so much. Sometimes domestication giveth, sometimes it taketh away.
It gave us the Three Sisters for sure. With video goodness.
Honeybees have wild relatives too. Well, maybe.
But do the NDCs recognise any of the above?

IFAD says farmers might need to change crops. Farmers unavailable for comment as presumably they’re too busy changing crops.
Case in point: China moves into cacao.
The food system is at the centre of all our ills. But I’m not sure switching from maize to sorghum is going to cut it.
And neither will watching those food miles, alas.
Example of a farmer changing crops, watching food miles and diversifying the food system.
I suppose we could also just eat more trees?
We’ll need ethnobotanists for that.
And there’s clearly plenty of pumpkins out there.
Maybe garum would go well with some of those NTFPs, and pumpkins.
Do they teach garum at Fermentation School?
Whoa, I did not realize archaea in the vertebrate gut feed on bacterial fermentation products.
And let’s not forget to put everything in genebanks before it’s too late so we have a chance to do all of the above.

Parasites of oil palm monocultures as avatars of hope and justice.
30 ways to leave your monoculture.
French take on investing in natural capital. Hopefully not oil palm monocultures though.

Cologne has a mustard museum and I want to visit it.
Lecture on the role of sugar in supporting slavery and capitalism. Where is the sugar museum?Ah here it is.
The cassowary may have been domesticated in New Guinea ten thousand years ago (with sugarcane?). Deserves a museum.
Speaking of domestication, here is how that of citrus happened. There’s actually a number of different citrus museums out there.
Nice PhD opportunity Sweden studying beans in Rwanda. There are museums in both places, I’m pretty sure.

Luxury brands discover biodiversity: “There is no champagne without grapes, no ready-to-wear without silk and cotton, no perfume without flowers…”
What about global food and agriculture companies though? Let’s find out, shall we?
TV can help where companies won’t.
Of course, you can set up your own company, as these Tunisian women did.
Imagine a company helping to move a species to “green status.” Imagine.
They could sign the Zero Hunger Pledge for the Private Sector while they’re at it.
But meanwhile, on Ojibwe land…