- Long article on the politics (and more) of maize in Mexico.
- Yet more on the slow comeback of millets in (parts of) India.
- International Conference on Pollinator Biology, Health and Policy on July 24-28, 2010 at Penn State.
- Hunted ungulates are semi-domesticated.
- “…psychoactive plant toxins were a mundane occurrence in the environments of hominid evolution, and our ancestors may have been exploiting plant drugs for very long periods of time.”
- “I was confronted with centrefolds showing downy, smooth petals and moistened, hot-pink lips that pouted in the direction of tautly curved shafts and heavily veined pouches.”
Nibbles: Protected areas, Sturgeon, Geographic indications, Ugandan yams, Tomato controversy, Maya agriculture, Alternatives to slash-and-burn, Asian veggies, Food composition
- Bird people say: Critical migratory waterbird sites need urgent protection. Tomato and potato crop wild relative people say: What, only the critical ones? You’re lucky, mate!
- Toffs everywhere start stocking up on caviar.
- Tequila and cheese geographically indicated. Foie gras says: Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
- Uganda Government minister says yams cause cancer. Oh, come now, steady on.
- Are Tomatoes Fruits or Vegetables? Asks mental_floss. Oh no, I’m not going there, says me.
- “…where there is a market, the Maya will work to develop supply capability; where there is no market, traditional subsistence methods are better than the introductions.”
- Building a better slash-and-burn agriculture.
- Nice Asian greens. I’m hungry already.
- Crop Composition Database gets facelift.
Nibbles: Food prices, Exotica, Mint, Walnuts
- “Global agricultural production … on track to satisfy estimated long term demand.” That’s the good news. Food prices to rise by around 40%.
- “Israel plows new ground in exotic crops.” Ho hum.
- US regains global dominance in mint … but at what price?
- Greek walnut trees way out on a limb.
A plan to keep cacao alive in Ivory Coast, but for how long?
A long article in the Financial Times a few days ago described the woes of the Ivorian cacao industry. Fundamentally, it’s down to old, and therefore increasingly sick and unproductive, trees. And the quantity squeeze is forcing farmers to compromise on quality.
All this is important because Ivory Coast accounts for 39% of the world’s cacao production. A “chocolate crisis” is looming. And companies like Nestlé are worried. They employ a small army of agronomists, breeders and extensionists just to guarantee their supply of raw materials.
Hence their “Cocoa Plan” to replant 12 million trees (out of a total of 2 billion in the country) over the next decade at a cost of almost $100 million. A monumental task for a crop grown by hundreds of thousands of smallholders. The article does not go into detail on the varieties that are being used in the replanting, beyond saying that they are not GMOs and that the plantlets
…have already been nicknamed “Mercedes” for their supposedly upmarket quality. “They grow very, very quickly,” says Jebouet Kouassi, a 43-year-old who runs one of Nestlé’s nurseries in Ivory Coast.
Neither, alas, does the Cocoa Plan’s website. Elsewhere I found this:
The seedlings will be produced from high-yield and resistant varieties by somatic embryogenesis, which produce replicas of high performance cocoa trees, with high yield and high resistance to disease.
I hope that the narrowing of genetic diversity that this approach seems to imply will not store up problems for the future.
Recipes then and now
And here’s another of those serendipitous juxtapositions that the tubes are so great at producing, if you’re on the alert for them. A blog on historical American recipes on one side. And, on the other, how African specialty foods are infiltrating current gastronomy. Good to see this penetration of the international market, of course, but truth to tell, not many of said specialty foods are very African, apart from having being grown there. When will we see Swahili dishes go mainstream in the US or Europe, say, or finger millet porridge, or fried plantain? The way the marula fruit has.