- Neolithic farmers spread into Europe by sea.
- And it looks like the ones who got to Crete eventually gave rise to the Minoans.
- And ate food not unlike what Cretans ate up to a hundred years ago.
- Well of course the olive is important to all that.
- Ten thousand years later, we find that organic is an impossible dream.
- And Fairtrade may or may not work.
- But value chains will make you free. Although that’s easier said than done.
- And you have to be climate-smart to boot. Really, who’d be a farmer, in the Neolithic or now.
Nibbles: De Schutter, Madagascar beans, Beer!, Cocktails!, CIAT strategy, Segenet, FGR, Risotto again, Domestication, Quinoa, Medieval workplan, Late blight
- “Productivism” skewered one last time. Until the next time.
- The Malagasy Bean Renaissance. No, really.
- The science of beer foam. Now there’s no excuse.
- Cocktails can be biodiverse too. You bet they can.
- CIAT’s new strategy makes a splash. Genebank front and centre.
- New ICIPE director tells all. She used to work at CIAT, did you know?
- First edition of The State of the World’s Forest Genetic Resources is out. Now to do something about it.
- Italy’s traditional rices preserved. Yes, Italy’s, you heard me.
- Agriculture was invented in the current interglacial. Why then, and not in the Eemian?
- Quinoa macronutrients exzzzzzzzamined.
- Your what-to-do-now guide to the medieval farm. Progress? Not what it’s cracked up to be.
- People of the Toluca valley! Expect researchers looking for wild potato genes resistant to late blight.
Nibbles: Seed drying, Yield gap trap, African fermentation, Rice & temp, Cultural exchange, Youth, Syria and ICARDA
- How to keep seeds dry. Don’t do this at home, folks! No, wait…
- Don’t get trapped in the yield gap, researchers told.
- Diana Buja breaks down banana brewing.
- Night temperatures cross important threshold for rice.
- Cultural change does not have to mean genetic erosion and loss of agrobiodiversity knowledge.
- Getting youth back into agriculture. Not just about the money.
- Latest from the tragic ICARDA situation
Nibbles: Nepal goat project, Kenyan camels, Sustainable diet metrics, Agri-informatics centre, Cassava dishes, CC & nutrients, Yield is all, African CC hotspots, AGRA seed enterprises, PlantVillage blog, Medieval weeds, French reserve, Black garlic, Australian tree tool
- Sometimes all it takes is a goat.
- Or a camel.
- I wonder how either would figure into a metric for a sustainable diet. Wonder if these people will be interested in those metrics.
- Cassava figures in lots of different ways.
- No word on whether carbon dioxide will affect its nutrient content the way it does with other crops.
- Who cares, it’s yield we’re after. Well, that’s in trouble too in some parts of Africa.
- That’s the only way those African seed start-ups are going to survive.
- Yeah, but disease resistance is important, Shirley. PlantVillage gets a blog.
- And weeds? Don’t forget the weeds. Although of course some of them you can eat. Put that in your metrics.
- Meanwhile, France starts to re-wild. Would love to see some wild relatives in the Bois du Boulogne. Livestock wild relatives, not your crazy cousin on his gap year.
- And now we can figure out what climate change might do to them. I guess this thing might work for European animals. Says here it works for Australian trees.
- Speaking of France, garlic is quintessentially French, isn’t it? Well, maybe, but it’s also very Korean, in its black, cured form.
Micronesian memories
Jonathan Gourlay’s wonderful dissection of his predictably disastrous experience as an outsider running a shop in Micronesia, One Small Store, struck a chord for a number of reasons. First, the great writing. Here’s a sample, chosen from many possibilities:
In Kitti, giant flat basalt stones are still lined up in two rows of three in the center of the feast house, each clanging with its own tone as shirtless men pound stone on stone, mashing up the thick, strong kava (called sakau) for the feast. The musical clacking and clanging of stones begins chaotically and then, as the kava turns gray and viscous, coalesces into one rhythmic song, calling the gods and people to the feast house. You can still join this song. You sit and mash the sakau root with the other sakau pounders around the ancient rock. But you cannot lead the song of the stones. The song just happens, as it has for centuries, when it happens. And when it is complete, you can still drink the sakau. If the sakau is strong, you become the stillest thing in the universe. An observer of life from outside of life. Everything, the ocean, the mango and mangrove trees, the barking dogs, the sweep of time, seems abstract and small because you also feel abstract and small. And perhaps there is a foreigner, a mehn wai, in this group of sakau drinkers. A teacher or a lawyer, someone useful but ultimately unimportant. They are welcome to stay and welcome to leave. What has remained, for hundreds of years, is the clang of the rocks. What has remained, through waves of sailors, missionaries, and invading armies, is the calm of the sakau root sinking into the drinkers, whether they bear a centuries-old title like soum or soulik or souwel or the simple title of mehn wai. They sneak into the ceremony, these interlopers, and they always sneak away again, one way or another.
Then there are the numerous references to the biodiversity of Pohnpei, including of the agricultural kind — such an important part of island life. Kava, as in the extract above, for sure; but also, say, sea cucumbers and betel nut. ((Though not breadfruit, which is strange.)) And, as well, the evocation of how the traditional foods and way of life this biodiversity represents and underpins are being eroded by “things like spam, corned beef, …rice, and something called ‘coco’—a mixture of unripe mango, sugar-free Kool-Aid, and soy sauce.” It all brought back memories of my own time in the region; although thankfully it was not as challenging as Mr Gourlay’s, I think I know how he feels.
And among those memories are many — both happy and painful — of my friend the late Lois Englberger, who worked so hard for the health and nutrition of the people of Pohnpei. For all I know, it was in Mr Gourlay’s very shop that I took this photo, when I visited the island back in 2004. You’ll have to click on it to see it properly, but it’s an example of Lois’ efforts to communicate the evidence that people on the island could improve their nutrition and well being by going back to eating Pohnpei’s unfortunately neglected — and disappearing — orange bananas (and other crop varieties high in Vitamin A precursors, for that matter). That’s ten years ago. Wow. Let me leave you with Lois’ photo of one of the billboards spreading her message on the island, and which Mr Gourlay would, I suspect, find amusing now, if he didn’t then.
