Category: History

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The hipster future of coffee starts with a genebank

I started a post a few days ago with a quote suggesting that all that commercial farmers are interested in is yield. So let’s balance that today with this:

Geisha in undoubtedly a luxury, but in one important way, it deserves the hype. It is the first coffee to be grown commercially just because it tastes good.

coffee 002We blogged about the journey of the remarkable coffee landrace called Geisha (or Gesha) a few years ago: from Ethiopia’s forests to the CATIE genebank in Costa Rica to the Peterson family farm in Panama to all over the world, or, more specifically, a hipster coffee shop in Taiwan. But Hanna Neuschwander‘s Coffee in the New Millennium tells the story at much greater length, not to mention with much greater skill. For example, I wish I had thought to describe hillside coffee plantations, with their neat, undulating rows of bushes, as “living corduroy.”

The piece ends with a neat juxtaposition between World Coffee Research’s monumental International Multi-location Variety Trials and the more geographically focussed, but no less ambitious, in its own way, effort by the Peterson family. They’re looking for a new Geisha among hundreds of other Ethiopian landraces they are now testing on their Panamanian farm. I only have one bone to pick with Ms Neuschwander: why not fully acknowledge the role of the genebank at CATIE in all this, rather than just referring, anonymously, to “a research facility in Costa Rica”?

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Nibbles: Spinifex industry, Tsiperifery pepper, Pacific taro, Coffee double, Guadeloupe genebanks, Cucumber history, Gourmet maize, Peruvian cuisine, Heirloom rice

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Nibbles: Poleward migration, Pulse infographic, Vodka, Ancient horse DNA, Old fish, Certified cacao, On farm book, Coarse millets, Banana diversity, Pearl millet demo

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Drying figs, breaking bread

For commercial farmers and state bodies this kind of project currently lacks economic feasibility. But for community gardens, and people who have private gardens, there are other considerations. People who plant a tree in their private garden, or in a pot on their balcony, don’t need an industrial species. They would likely prefer a smaller fruit with a higher sugar content — a tastier fruit — that doesn’t keep that long in the fridge. Farmers have to make a living, but private individuals can plant these fruits and spread the genetic knowledge. Instead of bringing a check to a wedding, why not give the young couple a local fruit tree?

Nice idea, and a reminder that us ordinary people do have agency, and can make a difference — we don’t need to leave all the work to genebanks. The quote comes from Assaf Bashan, a young agronomist working to preserve local fig trees in the Sataf nature reserve near Jerusalem. It closes a recent piece in Haaretz by Ronit Vered, who I have it on good authority is the premier food writer in Israel. She also had another piece about figs late last year, focusing on the efforts by Adi Segal and Amit Pompan from Kibbutz Tzivon in the Galilee to revive traditional food processing methods.

They acquired their knowledge from their neighbors in Jish and by visiting other Arab towns in Galilee and on the West Bank. “We rarely encountered anyone who was angry or surprised at a couple of Jews who wanted to know the secrets of the traditional local customs. There’s politics in the background, but the focus is on love of the land and the fruits in the basket,” says Amit. “People talk to each other about their land, although I’ve had opportunity to conduct profound discussions about the situation and about the gloomy consequences for their private lives. And still these people generously give us the knowledge handed down to them by previous generations.”

Dare one have hope?

Anyway, too bad both articles are behind a paywall. Let me know if you’d like to know more. And Haaretz, I’m told you should translate זן (zan) as “variety” and מִין (meen) as “species.”