The No-nonsense Guide to World Food is not just an interesting book by community food activist Wayne Roberts, it’s also a Facebook page. Looks like it could be a good way to learn about the world’s street food trends, among other things. The latest post links to an article on worm-based dishes. Yummie.
Maize god appears on radio
Jeremy has just contacted me from London saying that today’s artifact on the BBC’s A History of the World in 100 Objects series is none other than a Mayan statue of (one of?) the maize god, Hun Hunahpu. 1
In Mayan mythology, the maize god was decapitated at harvest time but reborn again at the beginning of a new growing season.
You can read all about it, and listen to the programme, online. I’m sure this will not be the last agrobiodiversity-themed object to be featured on the programme.

Nibbles: Globalizing locavorism, Pollinator relations, Fisheries, Pea wild relative, Haitian coffee, Niche modeling, Slow Food, Chayote, Grass vs corn, Shade chocolate, American organic
- “…eleven models of regional food aggregation and distribution that are successful in linking local farmers with regional food chains.” Via.
- Hell hath no fury like a fig tree scorned.
- Tracking monkfish, saving monkfish.
- The history of the wild relative of the pea.
- Can coffee help rebuild Haiti?
- “Integrating bioclimate with population models to improve forecasts of species extinctions under climate change.”
- “The commoditization of products and taste: Slow Food and the conservation of agrobiodiversity.”
- CIAT promotes chayote in Vietnam. Why? Well, it’s not about the crop or the country. I suppose it’s about farmers and markets. But is there a diversity angle?
- How old is feeding corn (maize) to cows? Older than some people think, apparently.
- Shade-grown cacao sows seeds of its own demise.
- Waiting for the results of the USDA organic survey…
“If your garden is affected, where else can you get your food from?”
Where indeed.
Via.
Nibbles: GIPB, NPGS, Dogs for conservation, Harare gardens, Goat milk value added, Equator Prize, Humanitarian relief, Peruvian maize, Pseudo-cereals, Katine, Vavilov goes web 2.0, Travel, Haggis ban, African road datasets, Dyes, Adaptation pix, Baltic, AnGR, Jatropha
- GIPB revamps its website. Knowledge Resource Centre is ver. 4.0, no less.
- US National Plant Germplasm System explained to Canadians. Why? They have their own!
- Armadillo sniffing dogs.
- More urban farming in Zimbabwe.
- Interesting stuff you can make with goat milk.
- Who do you like for Equator Prize 2010? Avatar? No, wait, that’s something else. Well, actually…
- Nutrition for humanitarian workers.
- Large-eared white maize is ‘cultural heritage’ of Peru. So that’s all good then.
- Minor cereals and a gluten-free diet.
- Wanna talk to Katine? Ask about what the project is doing with/about agrobiodiversity, of course!
- Nikolay tweets!
- Agricultural and other assorted musings along the Mekong. Can’t help thinking that if you somehow aggregated all similar observations and geo-referenced them you’d come up with a pretty interesting picture of agriculture worldwide.
- A blow for Scottish agrobiodiversity and cuisine.
- Digitizing Africa’s roads.
- Natural dyes 101.
- IUCN photos of climate change adaptation. Includes agriculture! Well, sort of.
- Nordic agricultural scientists to discuss climate change adaptation. Grow bananas?
- Breeding Strategies for Sustainable Management of Animal Genetic Resources from FAO. Via.
- ATREE questions Jatropha.