Category: Information

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Historical food information

Weird how just a couple of days after I blogged about current African foodways, The Lubin Files at FAO points me to a wonderful website about the past eating habits of various East African countries. This was put together by Verena Raschke, who at the time was completing a PhD jointly at University of Vienna (Austria) and Monash University (Australia).

[Her] project is based on a precious and unique collection of literature and data from East Africa from the 1930s to the 1960s.

…

These unpublished data have been stored at the Federal Research Centre for Nutrition and Food Location Karlsruhe (Germany) for the last 30 years, after the Max Planck Nutrition Research Unit in Tanzania (East Africa) was shut down in the late1970s.

The material is called the Oltersdorf Collection, and it is a veritable treasure trove of historical information on crops, food and nutrition.

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African food blogging

Emeka Okafor over at Timbuktu Chronicles points to a blog that sounds really fascinating: BetumiBlog. Betumi is the African Culinary Network. It “connects anyone who delights in African cuisine, foodways, and food history.” BetumiBlog is run by Fran Osseo-Asare, who is clearly incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic about African food and cooking. She has contributed a chapter on Food and Foodways to the Sub-Saharan Africa volume of The Greenwood Encyclopedia of World Popular Culture ((Edited by Dennis Hickey, with Gary Hoppenstand the general editor of the series.)). That includes a very useful table summarizing the many different ways Africans prepare their starchy staples. My personal score is nine.

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Selling agriculture to students

Californian agriculture schools are on a recruiting drive, apparently. They’re adding things like “environmental studies” to their names and using slogans such as “Agricultural Research is UDDERLY Awesome” to broaden their appeal. But why not make more of the astonishing variety of crops, livestock and associated organisms — agrobiodiversity — to attract students? People love diversity. How about: “Save the Knobbed Russet: study horticulture.” Ok, you can no doubt come up with something better…

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International meet on agrobiodiversity

UC Davis is organizing a follow-up to the international symposium held in Aleppo, Syria in 1997 under the name of “The Origins of Agriculture and the Domestication of Crop Plants in the Near East.” Also dedicated to Jack R. Harlan (1917–1998), celebrated agricultural botanist and plant explorer, the 2008 conference is entitled “Biodiversity in Agriculture: Domestication, Evolution, & Sustainability.” If you’re planning to go, how about reporting on the conference for our readers at Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog?