- Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
- Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
- Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
- If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
- Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
- The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from its cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cacao’s traditional growing belt.
- And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.
Nibbles: Festivals, Wheat breeding, Cowpea, Community seed bank, Mint diversity
- Festivals, rituals and seed-saving go hand in hand, as this photo essay on Koraput’s Adivasis shows for World Indigenous Peoples Day.
- Speaking of unlikely alliances, Israeli and Palestinian researchers have teamed up on wheat that can take the heat in a warming, drying Middle East.
- Not to be outdone in the resilience stakes, the cowpea shrugs off both drought and flooding, according to FAO.
- If all this talk of resilient crops has you inspired, here’s a how-to on starting your own community seed bank, in South Africa or anywhere else for that matter.
- And for when preservation is really about nostalgia: Romania’s Buzau genebank is keeping childhood mint flavours alive, chocolate, clove and vanilla notes included.
Brainfood: Avocado history, Brazil commuity seedbanks, Citizen science, Agroecology double, Indigenous knowledge, Turkish seeds, Swiss biodiversity
- Ethnobotanical and genetic assessments of Central American avocado landraces reveal novel sources of biodiversity and ancient migration patterns. DNA from landraces, and interviews with farmers, show that people transported and cultivated avocados across the Americas long before European contact, with landraces from lowland Nicaragua and Honduras in particular showing evidence of ancient migration from South America.
- The Circle of Seeds: An Ethnography of Seed Guardianship and the Making of Agroecological Futures in Paraná, Brazil. Community seed banks depend on relationships of care, reciprocity and collective labour, especially among women farmers, and not just on knowing how to store seeds properly. Though that helps, clearly.
- iNaturalist as a Tool to Improve Agroecological Biodiversity Knowledge: An Ecuadorian Case Study. A citizen science platform can strengthen agroecological biodiversity knowledge, but more efforts are needed to engage farmers.
- Are agroecological practices pro-poor? Evidence from smallholder farms in Zimbabwe. Farmers using agroecological practices were generally wealthier and their farms were more diverse in crop and livestock species, but the association between the use of improved practices and diet outcomes was inconsistent.
- Regenerative agriculture for dietary diversity and food security in Zambia. Agroecological practices were positively correlated with improved dietary quality and food security, including (though not exclusively) through farm production diversity. No word on the wealth of the farmers involved.
- Indigenous Peoples’ knowledge systems and practices for climate survival. Indigenous knowledge systems, including of farmers, offer tested approaches to climate adaptation and resilience that warrant a central place in responses to environmental change.
- Guardians of Agricultural Biodiversity: Farmer Perceptions and Sustainability of Local Seed Varieties in Turkish Highlands. Farmers continue to maintain local seed varieties, driven as much by social, cultural and market considerations as by agronomic performance. But they need support.
- Religion, spirituality and faith of Swiss farmers in relation to biodiversity-linked farming behaviour. Farmers’ religious and spiritual values can shape biodiversity-friendly management decisions, showing personal belief systems are important in conservation. Even in Switzerland.
Nibbles: Museum of Cider, Aport apple, Rattan genebank, Sri Lanka rice, Saudi coffee landscapes
- In the UK, Herefordshire’s Museum of Cider is picking up national recognition for its genebank of heritage apple trees. The BBC’s canonical autumnal apple story comes a little early this year.
- Speaking of iconic apples, Kazakhstan is scaling up efforts to bring back the Aport, the giant heirloom that once made Almaty famous. No word of museums, though. Or cider.
- Over in the Philippines, Department of Environment and Natural Resources is beefing up its rattan genebank to keep pace with demand, with forest stewards in Bukidnon planting seedlings to match. Furniture makers need genebanks as much as cider makers.
- Sri Lanka’s pre-Green Revolution heirloom rice varieties, purana haal, are being eyed for their resilience and disease-management potential. Good thing they’re in the national genebank.
- Saudi Arabia’s Jazan terraced coffee farms are turning into rural and ecotourism hotspots, proving not all agrobiodiversity needs to be in a genebank to survive. But it helps.
Nibbles: Tigray grapes, Latin American opportunity crops, Hawaii & Cayman coconuts, North Macedonian collecting, South Korea seed vault, Eswatini seed hub, Expensive healthy diets
- A North Macedonian professor’s 15-year rescue mission for landraces and crops surviving only in remote villages. Why bother? Stay tuned…
- Ancient grapevines in Tigray represent a unique genetic lineage with potential value for breeding varieties adapted to dryland conditions.
- Hawai’i Public Radio checks in on Maui’s coconut genebank. Useful to breed varieties adapted to really wet conditions, presumably.
- The Cayman Islands are also hoarding coconuts, along with lots of tasty fruits.
- A USD 400,000 boost from Taiwan for the Eswatini national genebank. Indigenous vegetables get much-needed love.
- A regional survey of 25 orphan crops across 13 Latin American countries finds quinoa and amaranth well-catalogued, but characterization budgets are the real bottleneck. Collecting and conserving in genebanks is great, but not enough.
- South Korea puts 330,000 seed accessions under “double lock”, hedging against both climate change and war. Conserving in one place is not enough.
- FAO warns that nearly a third of the world can’t afford the USD 4.28 a day that a healthy diet costs — nearly three billion people, and rising. That’s why we need al the above, I guess.