Category: Featured

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…

Andy Jarvis gets real on climate change:

Why always assume that climate change goes in the direction of negative change? … More degree days will surely shorten fruiting time, giving you production earlier. Greater extremes between maximum and minimum temperatures in the day might give you sweeter fruit. And less risk of frost early in the season during flowering could increase production. I fear we’re predisposed to always see things negatively.

Indeed we are.

Madeline nails the weird Chinese vegetable: celtuce, or stem lettuce, or wosun, rather than osun (Chinese: 莴笋; pinyin: wōsŭn).

back40 pooh-poohs the whole long-term-thinking thing:

The notion that we can usefully project that far ahead, make good decisions on a grand scale in any time frame, or somehow develop governance systems that would not degenerate, alternate or lose interest is rank nonsense targeted to the short term thinking and airy fairy fantasies of urban dreamers.

The article on perennials was really good, particularly the summary of what has been done. I just wish it wasn’t in ISIS. If the Land Institute wants to accomplish anything in the greater scheme of things, they have to crawl out of the holier than thou organic only everyting else be dammed mindset or they’ll just keep being ignored by mainstream breeders. It’s sad, really. We all need to work together.

Well why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Anastasia?