- Farming from space.
- (Part of) the history of nutmeg.
- “Eat Like a Pilgrim.”
- Biggest fungal collection in the world created.
- Loss of indigenous grape varieties not holding Moroccan winemakers back.
Silk Road on show in New York
The American Museum of Natural History has an exhibition on the Silk Road. It looks pretty good, and there even seems to be a bit on agrobiodiversity. I mean apart from the obvious, the silkworm and the camel. In particular, you get a look at the night markets of Turfan.
Surprisingly, visitors to markets along the ancient Silk Road—long before overnight shipping and refrigeration—could also choose from an array of foreign delicacies. As travelers moved along trade routes, they introduced their own ingredients and recipes to foreign lands. Over time, such exotic edibles became familiar features on local menus.
Check the video at the 2:18 mark. Not bad, I guess. But was it too much to ask for — having come so far — to include something about the role of this trade route in the spread of at least crops like the apple and wheat?
So, farewell then, Claude Levi-Strauss
Like the Archaeobotanist, I too was astonished by the news that Claude Levi-Strauss had died today because I was not aware that he hadn’t died many years ago. Rather than explain why a blog about agrobiodiversity should mark the passing of a centenarian and seminal anthropologist, let me just urge you to visit Dorian Fuller’s blog and read his appreciation and the sample myth on the origins of agriculture that Levi-Strauss collected.
It shows that almost all of us are ignorant of the origins of our foods and food-processing technologies. Bonus points if you spot the other ways in which the Munduruku explanation of the origins of their agriculture might be not the whole “truth”.
Techuitlatl and dihé
What is the lacustrine agrobiodiversity eaten both by the Aztecs and the Kanembu people of Lake Chad? Fascinating case of parallel cultural evolution.
Nibbles: Markets, Easter Island, Honey, Coffee, Cowpea, Morocco, Urban Ag, Kenya
- I love pictures of agrobiodiversity in markets.
- Humans did for trees on Rapa Nui after all, not rats.
- Like refining chocolate, extracting honey is a fragrant, messy process. Bring it on.
- Fair Trade coffee unfair to farmers, CIAT says.
- Another day, another genome. This time it’s cowpea.
- 2000 year old food forest in Morocco. Honestly! And guess what? It’s not thriving.
- Another video (long). Education of an Urban Farmer.
- Education of an ex-pastoralist farmer, Karamojong, Kenya