- Hanging out with farmers. Sounds like fun.
- UNEP maps Africa, then and now.
- Small farms are beautiful?
- How sugar changed everything etc etc.
- “Last week, descendants of the early Pueblo nations returned to plant a summer crop of corn, beans and squash, donating some of their traditional seed.” How cool is that?
- Balisca wine at the root of it all.
- California’s farmers waste water — because they have to.
- University of Leeds to spend GBP2.8 million studying poverty, agriculture and nutrition.
- “We have already lost three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops.” Right.
The Filipino roots of mezcal
“Clash of civilizations” is a common rhetorical trope these days. But it is as well to remember that good things can — and often do — happen when cultures come together. A paper just out in GRACE gives an example involving agrobiodiversity. ((Daniel Zizumbo-Villarreal & Patricia Colunga-GarcÃaMarÃn (2008) Early coconut distillation and the origins of mezcal and tequila spirits in west-central Mexico. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 55:493-510.)) In it, Daniel Zizumbo Villareal — the doyen of Mexican coconut studies, among other things — and his co-author set out the evidence for the origin of mezcal, the generic name for agave spirits in Mexico. ((So “tequila” is a DOC for the mezcal made from Agave tequilana Weber in the state of Jalisco and others, for example.))
It turns out that this most Mexican of drinks is unknown from pre-Columbian times, although of course the cooked stems and floral peduncles of various species of Agave were used as a carbohydrate source by the ancient populations of what is now western Mexico, and drinks were made from both these and their sap. But, apparently, distillation had to wait until a Filipino community became established in the Colima hills in the 16th century. They were brought over to establish coconut plantations, and started producing coconut spirits, as they had done back home. The practice was eventually outlawed in the early 17th century, and this prohibition, plus increased demand for hard liquor by miners, led to its application to agaves instead, and its rapid spread. The first record of mezcal is from 1619. Mexicans (not to mention other tequila afincionados the world over) have a lot to thank Filipinos for.
Nibbles: Potato, Cheese, Edible landscapes, Apples, Bees, Cacao, Vegetables
- The Guardian has a leader on the potato. Please let this year end soon. And thanks, Danny.
- Lucy Appleby RIP.
- Inner city farming in the UK.
- Gary Nabhan on where apples came from, and where they’re going. And more. Thanks again, Danny!
- Tracking bees’ response to climate change by satellite.
- Mars thinks cacao biodiversity is important. No news from Earth.
- The “keyhole gardens” of Lesotho.
Farming and tourism
You may remember my recent post from Lima bemoaning the lost opportunity of linking agrobiodiversity education with tours of an archaeological site. Here’s an example of such an opportunity emphatically grasped. An historic farmhouse in Rhode Island is offering “visitors, particularly children, a glimpse into the lost world of small-scale farming in New England, when the distance between the chicken coop and the dinner plate was much shorter.” And that includes heirloom varieties, for example of tomatoes, of which the staff grow 30. They also keep some local ((Later: Ok, Jeremy, how about “locally important”?)) livestock breeds, including Red Devon cattle, famous for pulling settlers’ wagon trains West.
“One of the things we’ve worked on since we’ve been here is constantly trying to cultivate in people’s minds and hearts a preservation ethic, not just about preserving an old house,” he said, “but preserving landscapes.”
Molasses in January
There really is no length to which we will not go to bring you all the agrobiodiversity news that’s fit to print. Case in point coming up. Jeremy gets a heads-up from his Google Alert on sorghum. It’s from an unlikely — even suspicious — source, but he dutifully clicks on the link and is rewarded with a reference to the “Sorghum Molasses Purity Act of 1837.” He dismisses it as a joke, but also shares the link with me, knowing I’m in need of a laugh after a heavy week wrestling with a recalcitrant donor report. Being of a more trusting disposition, and never having run across error, humour or misinformation on the internet, I quickly google, fully expecting to hit a learned wikipedia article on the said piece of legislation, surely a notorious example of anti-diversity agricultural protectionism of the most egregious kind.
Right. No such thing, of course. Google knows nothing of any Sorghum Molasses Purity Acts, of 1837 or any other date. But my efforts on your behalf are most emphatically not totally wasted. For now I — and you — know about the
Great Boston Molasses Flood of January 1919 when a molasses storage tank owned by the Purity Distilling Company burst, sending a two-story-high wave of molasses through the streets of the North End of Boston.
And who wouldn’t give up a slice of lunchtime to be able to quote such a fact?
Oh, and by the way. There may not have been a Sorghum Molasses Purity Act of 1837, but there was a Sugar and Molasses Act of 1733, which seems to be an example of agricultural protectionism of the most egregious kind.