- Let’s say we wanted to transition to a more local and low-input production system in Europe. What seeds would we need and where would we get them from? The Greens/EFA in the European Parliament have some ideas.
- IITA is pushing the yam bean in Nigeria. Europe next?
- More on that new Australian wild tomato from a couple of years back. With audio goodness.
- The largest ever einkorn variety comparison trial makes the German news. Well, makes a press release anyway. Yam bean next?
- Another continent, another ancient grain: sorghum in the US. Yam bean next?
- The Ethiopia Grass project aims to improve livestock production, food crop yields AND soil quality. The trifecta!
- Nice infographics displaying dodgy data on the most common ingredients in different cuisines. Yam bean and einkorn nowhere to be seen.
- Cool community-created online catalogue of British apples. Looking forward to the yam bean one.
- It was drought that did for the Hittites, not lack of yam beans. Sea Peoples unavailable for comment.
- It was Yersinia pestis from Issyk-Kul that nearly did for Europe in the Middle Ages. Yes, you can study the genetic diversity of ancient deadly bugs and well as that of crops like yam bean and einkorn.
Brainfood: NbS, Intercropping, Sparing, Mixtures, Intensification, Shifting cultivation, Mexican wild foods, Chinese NUS, Andean crops, South African indigenous foods, Uganda community seedbanks
- Nature-Based Solutions and Agroecology: Business as Usual or an Opportunity for Transformative Change? Nature-based solutions need to be diversity-based. Let’s look at some example, shall we? Buckle up…
- The productive performance of intercropping. Meta-analysis shows intercropping leads to more land sparing and more protein compared to monoculture.
- Sparing or expanding? The effects of agricultural yields on farm expansion and deforestation in the tropics. Ouch, increasing yield results more often in higher deforestation than lower. If only they had gone for intercropping…
- Crop mixtures outperform rotations and landscape mosaics in regulation of two fungal wheat pathogens: a simulation study. …or crop mixtures.
- Intensified rice production negatively impacts plant biodiversity, diet, lifestyle and quality of life: transdisciplinary and gendered research in the Middle Senegal River Valley. And just to be clear, agricultural expansion can be bad for both farmers and the environment.
- Drivers and consequences of archetypical shifting cultivation transitions. Being able to charge rent is the main driver of the move away from shifting cultivation, but the environmental results depend on what system replaces it.
- Contribution of the biodiversity of edible plants to the diet and nutritional status of women in a Zapotec communities of the Sierra Norte, Oaxaca, Mexico. It’s the older, less educated housewives that are more nature-based, and all the better for it.
- Six Underutilized Grain Crops for Food and Nutrition in China. That would be barley, buckwheat, broomcorn millet, foxtail millet, oat, and sorghum, which would certainly make a nature-based breakfast of champions.
- Traditional crops and climate change adaptation: insights from the Andean agricultural sector. Growing traditional crops in the Andes may be less profitable, but it is more resilient to climate change. Unclear which of the two options is more nature-based, though. And has anyone told China?
- Opportunities and Challenges of Indigenous Food Plant Farmers in Integrating into Agri-Food Value Chains in Cape Town. To take advantage of nature-based solutions in South Africa, you have to know about local nature.
- Community Seedbanks in Uganda: Fostering Access to Genetic Diversity and Its Conservation. More research is needed to figure out how community seedbanks can be at their nature-based best.
Brainfood: Sulawesi Warty Pig, Neolithic violence, Early cotton, Livestock poop, Pontic millet, Bronze Age opium, Sami shamanism, Wild chickens
- Pigs as Pets: Early Human Relations with the Sulawesi Warty Pig (Sus celebensis). You don’t need to be a sedentary agricultural society to domesticate an animal as a pet. There was the dog, and also the Sulawesi Warty Pig.
- Conflict, violence, and warfare among early farmers in Northwestern Europe. Early sedentary agricultural societies were not exempt from violence, pets or no pets.
- The earliest cotton fibers and Pan-regional contacts in the Near East. At least early sedentary agricultural societies did all that fighting wearing comfortable cotton garments.
- How animal dung can help to reconstruct past forest use: a late Neolithic case study from the Mooswinkel pile dwelling (Austria). In between spells of fighting, early sedentary agricultural societies let their livestock roam the forest during the day but kept them in their settlements in winter, and that accumulates a lot of dung that can come in useful thousands of years later in working out what said livestock ate in said forest.
- Between Cereal Agriculture and Animal Husbandry: Millet in the Early Economy of the North Pontic Region. You didn’t need to be a completely sedentary agricultural society to grow Panicum miliaceum in the Pontic steppes.
- Opium trade and use during the Late Bronze Age: Organic residue analysis of ceramic vessels from the burials of Tel Yehud, Israel. There comes a time when a sedentary agricultural society will start growing, and then selling, drugs.
- A Sacred Tree in the Boreal forest: A Narrative About a Sámi Shaman, her Tree, and the Forest Landscape. You don’t need to be a sedentary agricultural society and grow drugs to have a rich spiritual life, but it’s harder — though not impossible — to document it.
- Historic samples reveal loss of wild genotype through domestic chicken introgression during the Anthropocene. Sedentary agricultural societies are polluting the genetics of wild species related to domesticates. The chicken in this case, the Sulawesi Warty Pig unavailable for comment.
Food diversity, every day
Yet another thoroughly satisfying Eat This Newsletter from Jeremy. Here are two snippets on crop diversity, but there’s lots more…
Talking about Eating to Extinction
Dan Saladino’s book Eating to Extinction has justifiably won all sorts of awards since it came out about 18 months ago. Capitalising on that and the interest more generally in vanishing foods and ingredients, Dan and his chums put together a Food Diversity Day on 13 January. I was unable to watch any of it for a host of reasons, but a post by Patricia Bixler Reber on her marvellous Researching Food History website reminded me that all of it is now online. There’s probably enough there to keep you busy for a good long while, and if there isn’t, Researching Food History is always good for a suggestion or two. I’d already booked for one on 31 January that promises to be a bit of a myth-buster (and that may yet become an episode).
Preserving Potato Diversity
Dan Saladino doesn’t devote an awful lot of space to the always-humble potato, which is by no means a criticism; there is so much more to be concerned about. But I suspect he is well aware of some of the more exotic potatoes of the Andes and beyond, with their colourful flesh and skin. Diverse efforts to promote these varieties, by encouraging high-end restaurants as much as low-grade snacks, have had some success in Peru. The latest brings Ecuador into the fold, with crisps/chips made from ancestral varieties known locally as black heart and red heart. The tubers are grown by a collective of 180 small farmers, who are guaranteed a stable price for their crop. I hope they use some of that cash to improve their family nutrition.
And if you’re a gardener with a hankering for some creative potato diversity of your own, I highly commend true potato seed; read a bit about it thanks to Modern Farmer.
Nibbles: Fonio commercialization, Naked barley, Food books, Ag decarbonization, Nepal NUS, Millets & women, Crop diversity video, Maize god, Cherokee genebank, CWR, Japan genebank
- A Nigerian company is pushing fonio as the next global super-food. What could possibly go wrong?
- Personally, I think naked barley has a better chance.
- Humanities scholars recommend their favourite new books on food systems. I bet there will soon be one on fonio.
- Food and agriculture analyst at the Breakthrough Institute pens whole essay on how there should be public investment in moving agriculture from productivity gains to decarbonization without mentioning fonio.
- Well Nepal has orphan crops of its own and doesn’t give a fig for your fonio.
- Blogpost highlights the role of women in the cultivation and conservation of millets in Tamil Nadu.
- ISSD Africa video on the advantages of growing a diversity of crops, especially under climate change. Fonio, anyone?
- What does maize have to do with turtles? Gather round, children…
- The Cherokee Nation’s genebank is open for business. Maize available. No turtles.
- Long article on collecting, conserving and using crop wild relatives, including by Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank. Could fonio do with some diversity from its wild relatives? I suspect it’s not a huge priority, but maybe it will become one.
- It’s unclear how much diversity of orphan crops is in Japan’s high-tech genebank, but I bet it’s quite a bit. Fonio, I’m not so sure though. Maybe someone will tell me.