Commodity

Nibbles: Wheat Revolutions, Animal domestication, Sanbokan, Sea Island heirlooms, No regrets transformation, Peruvian smallholders, Seed systems book, Genebank vid, Business

BBC Food Programme on wheat, with the authors of Amber Waves and The Man Who Tried to Feed the World.
Tides of History podcast on livestock domestication with Prof. Greger Larson. He thinks “domestication” should be used as a descriptor of a state rather than a label for a process. He also thinks that animals became “domesticated” basically only once (except for pigs).
A citrus fruit you never heard of is crucial to Japanese cuisine.
Bringing back heirloom rice and other traditional crops in the Sea Islands. And more.
Building back better: from 200 food systems recommendation to 41 no regrets actions. And why we need them NOW!
A Peruvian peasant organization goes digital.
Huge book on strengthening seed systems in South Asia.
Nice CGN video on seed processing in genebanks.
How can businesses value biodiversity? Here come the guidelines.

Finding the Colorado Orange apple.
British duck breed goes wild in Thailand.
Might consumers care about genetics?
Well they do, right? At least if they’re into heirloom varieties and heritage breeds.
If they do care, they should read this book.
Is madeira your desert island wine?

Prof. Gayle J. Fritz gets 2020 Mary W. Klinger Book Award for “Feeding Cahokia.” Beyond maize and priests.
The ups and downs of grape varieties. Airén relinquishes the top spot! So much data: who will calculate diversity stats?
Nice, long podcast on the beginning of farming in the Fertile Crescent. More coming up.
“Treasure Trove of Benefits and Variety at the Table” is the sort of cookbook we all need.
What is it about floating gardens? Quite a lot, really. But they are not easily transplanted, as it were.

Remembering Robin Graham, prophet of biofortification.
Honouring plant breeder supreme Fred Blisss.
Need to produce seed of all those new varieties that breeders come up with.
And save the stuff they will replace: The Economist does the potatoes of Chiloé.
Hey, it’s not just about the crops: conserving goats on farm in India.
The experimental archaeology of bread thrives under corona. And if you were intrigued by the potato detoxification reference, find the details on Bill Schindler’s website. And not only bread and potatoes, also beer…
Like Mozart’s oat beer? Which was apparently killed off by lager back in Austria but is now available in Denver.
Food shouldn’t be cheap, it should be affordable, and not only for those who consume it. Ancient Egyptian bread will be exempted.
No way Kenyan coffee can be described as cheap. h/t Jeremy’s newsletter: have you subscribed yet?
I don’t know how cheap mungbean is in Myanmar, but it seems to be very valuable.
The PNG singing dog is not extinct in the wild after all? Priceless.
Combination of key and photo guide to the identification of European fungi. Worth its weight in truffles. Source.

All-Africa Summit on Diversifying Food Systems with African Traditional Vegetables to Increase Health, Nutrition and Wealth. New dates! 25-28 January 2021.
“How do you like Cocoa and Coffee? Saving crops, protecting culture, sustaining livelihoods.” Online event, 8 September. Register here.
How the US prairies got wheat, a soil classification, tree shelter belts and weeds from the Russian steppes, thanks to Mennonite farmers and emigre Jewish scientists. Entertaining podcast on what sounds like a fascinating book. Oh and there’s a video too. Nice Vavilov anecdote.
History of Spices 101.
Quick summary of coconut research and development in Tanzania.
A genebank gets off the ground in Jordan.
How the mosquito Aedes aegypti got domesticated. Yeah, domesticated.
Texas and Georgia move into jamón ibérico: acorns off the menu, “pecans, peanuts and sunflower” on. Hilarity ensues.
The USDA National Plant Germplasm System gets a new database. Go crazy.
Meanwhile, Cultivariable publishes his latest evaluation data on the USDA potato germplasm (see “Evaluation Year”). Will it find its way into the above-mentioned database?