Joel Haas is an American author and sculptor. He’s traveling in Taiwan at the moment, and writing about it online. I don’t think he has a particular interest in agrobiodiversity, but maybe I’m wrong, because there are many engaging observations on useful wild plants, crops and food in his posts and numerous photos.
Farm business doing OK
Department of Silver Linings: No matter how bad things get, people still need to eat. The Economist reports on good times in the agriculture industry, even though “much of the global economy is falling apart and demand both for consumer goods ((Food, of course, is the canonical consumer good. Or is it?)) and the firms that make and finance them is collapsing”. You want scary?
China is consuming twice as much vegetable oil (instead of less healthy pork fat), 60% more poultry, 30% more beef and 25% more wheat, and these are merely the obvious foods. Scores of niches have expanded dramatically: people are drinking four times as much wine, for example.
And yet even with all this growth, people in China still, on average, consume only one-third as much milk and meat as people in wealthy countries such as Australia, America and Britain. The gap is even larger with India, which is also growing fast.
Buy now, while stocks last.
The White House gets a food garden
There’s hunger in the US, but the Obamas at least will be ok.
Rock salt and pond scum
A fascinating post over at Rancho Gordo discusses tequesquite. That’s a natural salt that has been used in Mexican cooking since pre-Columbian times, including for nixtamalization, a process that makes maize easier to process, tastier and more nutritious.
The post also mentions the alga known as tecuilayl (Spirulina geitleri). This was apparently an important food for the Aztecs. ((Alas, it doesn’t make it into FAO’s guide to the seaweed industry.)) Our resident expert on Mexico says it’s the perfect complement to a succulent steamed axolotl in chile sauce. Yummie.
Water, water everywhere
A couple of fun stories about the historical dimension of the exploitation of aquatic biodiversity from Britain’s Daily Mail this morning. First, how Google Earth revealed a thousand-year-old fish trap off the coast of Wales. And second, how the reintroduction of the beaver, absent since it was hunted to extinction in the 16th century, could reduce water bills.