Category: Cooking

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The latest on the Carolina African Runner Peanut

Jeremy’s latest newsletter discusses the (partial) revival of the Carolina African Runner Peanut by chefs. We have blogged about that here on before, but this is a useful update.

Believe it or not, there are other food podcasts worth listening to. One of them is Gravy, produced by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Recently I listened to the episode America’s Lost Peanut and the Price of Bringing it Back and I have no hesitation in recommending you do the same. It explores both the delight chefs have found in that Lost Peanut and the difficulties in making the peanut available at a price that non-chefs can afford.

The Carolina Runner peanut first hit modern headlines at the tail end of 2016, when it was exciting enough for me to record a little rumination casting doubt on some of the wilder claims that surrounded its resurrection. I also wrote at some length about the history of the peanut and world affairs. I did not, however, foresee how hard it would be for the Carolina Runner to compete with Virginia peanuts (which have more than a drop of African peanut in their bloodlines). The episode of Gravy explains that the nuts currently have to be shelled by hand, unlike Virginia peanuts that can be fed into huge and expensive machines. A quick look around the internet showed a few hand-operated shellers; is it really that difficult to adapt one to work with Carolina Runners?

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Brainfood: Food systems, Micronutrients, Animal-source foods, Dietary diversity, Opportunity crops, Traditional landscapes, Gastronomic landscapes, Opportunity crops, Biofortification, Fermentation

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Nibbles: China genebanks, African genebanks, PNG genebank, Opportunity crops, Bananocalypse, IRRI genebank, African Runner Peanut, Australian genebank, Agrobiodiversity, Navajo agriculture, Wayuu agriculture, COPs

  1. With remarkable regularity, China announces some impressive genebank thing. Like a catalog for 105 tropical crop genebanks. But where is it?
  2. On the other hand, we probably don’t hear enough about African genebanks, so this piece is very welcome.
  3. Or about genebanks in Papua New Guinea, for that matter.
  4. Have we heard enough about “opportunity crops” yet? No, probably not.
  5. We will never stop hearing about the “bananocalypse,” I suspect.
  6. Or about the IRRI genebank from Mike Jackson. Not that I mind.
  7. The latest on the African Runner Peanut, about which we have blogged before. Several times. Not that I mind.
  8. I will never tire of hearing about genebanks getting loads of money.
  9. I will also never tire of hearing about win-win outcomes for biodiversity and food production.
  10. The Navajo know all about that. And the Wayuu people in Guajira, Colombia for that matter.
  11. We will soon all be tired of hearing about all the various COPs, but for now let’s see what the Dutch genebank and, let’s see who else we have, ok, sure, why not, ESG investors — what do they have to say?
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The olive’s second act?

Is Xylella — cause of the olive plague that has been stalking southern Europe for a decade — a blessing in disguise for the Salento? Jeremy asks the hard questions in his latest Eat This Podcast. Spoiler alert: Silvestro Silvestori thinks it might just be:

…at the heart of Xylella and the Salento is an identity crisis, that we’re all the children of farmers, we’re all farmers ourselves. And for most people, that’s not the case any longer. And there’s not a lot of industry left here as far as farming. So I think first we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, what are we?

Fascinating insights throughout, so listen to the whole thing. And wonder whether this will help.

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Nibbles: Cropscapes, Ecuador cacao, Nigerian yams, Lima bean show, Mesopotamian cooking, Nepal seed banks, RNA integrity, China genebanks, Cryo comics, Greening

  1. The authors of book “Moving Crops and the Scales of History” have been awarded the Edelstein Prize 2024 for their work to “redefine historical inquiry based on the ‘cropscape’: the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop.” Let’s see how many cropscapes we can come up with today.
  2. Here’s one. The Ecuador cacao genebank gets some much-needed help.
  3. Digging into Nigerian yams. And another.
  4. Castle Hex has a programme on Lima beans on 7-8 September. Sounds like fun.
  5. What if you can’t work out what the crops are, though? As in Mesopotamian recipe books, for example.
  6. The community seed banks of Nepal have a new website. Good news for those Nepalese cropscapes.
  7. A new project is testing RNA integrity number (RIN) as a metric of seed aging for a bunch of rare wild plants. One day maybe community seed banks will be using it.
  8. China has inventoried its agricultural germplasm. Will it be applying RIN next?
  9. The French are using bandes dessinées to teach about cryopreservation of animal genetic resources. Livestockscapes?
  10. Some drylands are getting greener and some people think that’s a problem. Always something.