The International Food Policy Research Institute seems to have a blog: blog world hunger. It started a while ago, by the look of things, but has lately shaken itself, rubbed the sleep from its eyes, and started wandering about the room. Alas, it needs a tweak or two. I tried to leave a comment and no matter how fast I typed it insisted my message had timed out as a result of inactivity. Maybe you’ll have better luck. There’s an ongoing discussion of agriculture and shifting climates, which seems appropriate today.
Fermenting revolution
Sandor Katz wrote a classic book a few years back about the history and practice of fermentation as a technique for preparing, enhancing and preserving food. Catch an interview with him at Grist. Let’s not forget that agricultural biodiversity includes that pesky microflora.
Dietary diversification for teachers
I guess it’s a bit old, but I was impressed by an FAO manual for teachers of agriculture, food and nutrition in Africa, in particular its chapter on diversity in diets. The message on agricultural biodiversity and its role in healthy diets has to start going out as early as possible.
Archaeology of food
Speaking of conferences, there’s another one that’s worth keeping an eye on, which I learned about via Eurekalert. It’s called Food and Drink in Archaeology 2007 and will feature a keynote address by Professor Martin Jones of the Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge entitled “Feast: Why Humans Share Food.”
Why is this relevant to us here at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog? Well…
Whilst the importance of nutrition for survival has long been recognised, recent studies have increasingly stressed the cultural significance of the production, distribution and consumption of foodstuffs through out all archaeological periods. An understanding of diet in past societies is therefore crucial to an understanding of daily life, and the relationships between different classes and societies throughout the world.
Traditional farming in Spain … and elsewhere
National Geographic has a fine feature called Photo of the Day. Today’s shows a Spanish farmer with a wooden, sled-like contraption with sharp rocks embedded in the bottom. It’s a threshing board, used at harvest time to cut up straw, separate cereal grains from chaff and break open chickpea pods. Now, unfortunately I can’t just take the NatGeo photo and put it up here for you to see, you’ll just have to go to their site, but I did look around for an illustration that was in the public domain, and I found it at Answers.com, in a fascinating article on the history of these tools. The NatGeo photo is worth seeing, though. While surfing, I also ended up at the Food Museum Online, which I’d never come across before. It’s not the prettiest looking site, but it has some great content, including illustrations of traditional farming practices and tools. There’s also a blog, with a feed.
Photo of a Spanish “trillo” by José-Manuel Benito
