Category: Featured

Onkel Bob is the latest to comment on that recent post on agri-intellectualism:

Pollan is a journalist, not a scientist nor an agronomist. He observes and reports. Sometimes he gets things wrong, but it is an error of interpretation and analysis, not a deliberate action on his part. Pollan tends to embellish and polish with the intention of making the product more readable. Alas, such practices tend to lose the accuracy science strives to achieve.

But…read the rest.

Mike Huben busts the drowning turkey myth, which I should really have checked myself:

But I wouldn’t be in any rush to compliment them on numbers or anecdotes: the turkey drowning story is an urban myth. His calculations on the amount of table scraps needed for fertilizer make all sorts of ridiculous, inefficient assumptions.

And there’s more:

The American Enterprise Institute is a propaganda organ for conservative corporate capitalism. They don’t really care about Pollan’s book…

Read the whole comment. And also the original article’s author on that turkey story:

The turkey story is a result of an interview with Mr. Nieman, the incident occurred about 2 miles from my mother’s childhood home, about 10 miles from where we live now. It’s interesting that the word of the farmer who suffered the loss of his livelihood is not good enough. Mr. Niemann has no reason to lie-neither does my mother, who remembers the incident. And 50 years ago, my grandfather was among the first in our community to build terraces to protect the soil on the farm we still farm. The farm produces more now than it did then. That would be the very definition of sustainability.

Harvey Blackburn notes that animal tissue genebanks are more common than was implied in a recent post.

Perhaps you should be exploring the number of gene banks which are developing comprehensive animal collections that can be used to reconstitute animal populations. Such gene banks have already been established in the U.S. through USDA/Agricultural Research service, Canada, the Netherlands, France, Brazil, Tunisia, Uganda and China.

Check out the USDA genebank numbers.

Raymond also weighs in on fermentation, sounding a warning:

Pablo is right when he says that many species in West and Central Africa are noteworthy for their use as fermented staple foods. Genetic diversity plays important role in this as not all varieties give good quality products. Unfortunately some old varieties known for their high value in fermentation are disappearing for their limited yield potential. They are being replaced with high yielding but poor quality modern varieties. Studies also revealed that cropping practices (type and quantity of fertilizer, chemicals used etc.) may impact on the quality of products.

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, canning is making a comeback.

West African maize and manioc (cassava), gourd and tree seeds are noteworthy for their use as fermented staple foods ‘ablo’, ‘toh’, ‘atcheke’, ‘inu’, ‘ogiri’. I confess that I am salivating as I write the names of these tasty foods.

Pavlovian response over, Pablo reminds us that…

…not all varieties ferment equally well and in the same way; some turn to sugars and become alcoholic rather quickly and others ferment slowly enough to release more proteins and nutrients or combine better with other food components.

There’s a lot, lot more…