Category: Markets

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The olive’s second act?

Is Xylella — cause of the olive plague that has been stalking southern Europe for a decade — a blessing in disguise for the Salento? Jeremy asks the hard questions in his latest Eat This Podcast. Spoiler alert: Silvestro Silvestori thinks it might just be:

…at the heart of Xylella and the Salento is an identity crisis, that we’re all the children of farmers, we’re all farmers ourselves. And for most people, that’s not the case any longer. And there’s not a lot of industry left here as far as farming. So I think first we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, what are we?

Fascinating insights throughout, so listen to the whole thing. And wonder whether this will help.

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Nibbles: Cropscapes, Ecuador cacao, Nigerian yams, Lima bean show, Mesopotamian cooking, Nepal seed banks, RNA integrity, China genebanks, Cryo comics, Greening

  1. The authors of book “Moving Crops and the Scales of History” have been awarded the Edelstein Prize 2024 for their work to “redefine historical inquiry based on the ‘cropscape’: the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop.” Let’s see how many cropscapes we can come up with today.
  2. Here’s one. The Ecuador cacao genebank gets some much-needed help.
  3. Digging into Nigerian yams. And another.
  4. Castle Hex has a programme on Lima beans on 7-8 September. Sounds like fun.
  5. What if you can’t work out what the crops are, though? As in Mesopotamian recipe books, for example.
  6. The community seed banks of Nepal have a new website. Good news for those Nepalese cropscapes.
  7. A new project is testing RNA integrity number (RIN) as a metric of seed aging for a bunch of rare wild plants. One day maybe community seed banks will be using it.
  8. China has inventoried its agricultural germplasm. Will it be applying RIN next?
  9. The French are using bandes dessinées to teach about cryopreservation of animal genetic resources. Livestockscapes?
  10. Some drylands are getting greener and some people think that’s a problem. Always something.
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Nibbles: SeedLinked, Heritage Seed Library, HarvestPlus, Enset, EBI, Saharan/Sahelian flora, Pollen, Food & climate, Food prices, Moonraker, Svalbard eats, Devex does seeds, CGRFA ABS survey

  1. SeedLinked: an app to source cool vegetable seeds. And more.
  2. Want to become a variety champion for the Heritage Seed Library? Where’s the app though?
  3. A compendium of evidence on the efficacy of biofortification from HarvestPlus. Jeremy surely available for comment?
  4. Kew celebrates efficacy of enset conservation in Ethiopia.
  5. Not sure if the Ethiopia Biodiversity Institute is in on that celebration.
  6. Some of Ethiopia is Sahelian, no? Anyway, here’s a nice piece on the forgotten, but important plants from that neck of the woods.
  7. We should all celebrate pollen banking much more.
  8. Celebrity chef worried about the effect of climate change on food.
  9. Including food prices. I dunno, maybe pollen banking will help.
  10. Or maybe even a lunar repository.
  11. Speaking of food prices, I bet this Svalbard restaurant is not cheap. Maybe there’s a nice view of the Seed Vault though. Who needs the moon?
  12. The latest Devex newsletter has lots of stuff on food prices and prizes and (non-lunar) seed vaults.
  13. Do you use any of the above for research and development? The FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture would like to hear from you.
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Brainfood: UK NUS, German labelling, Indian diversity, Ghana fonio, Kenya veggies, Rwanda biofortified beans, Cassava WTP, Urochloa resources, Perennial flax

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Nibbles: Seed info, Potato 101, Coffee 101, Rice repatriation, Iraq genebank, Use or lose, Teff breeding, Micronutrients, Agrobiodiversity, Plant a Seed Kit, WorldVeg to Svalbard, Seed Health Units

  1. Eastern and Southern Africa Small-scale Farmers’ Forum (ESAFF) launches SEED GIST, a quarterly repository of seed literature.
  2. A fun romp through potato history.
  3. A fun romp through coffee history.
  4. Hong Kong gets some rice seeds back from the IRRI genebank.
  5. No doubt Iraq will get some seeds back from the ICARDA genebank soon.
  6. Genebanks are only the beginning though.
  7. Breeding teff in, wait for it, South Africa.
  8. The possible tradeoffs of an environmentally friendly diet.
  9. IIED on the value of agrobiodiversity. Includes an environmentally-friendly and/or nutritious diet.
  10. Slow Food’s Plant a Seed Kit is all about agrobiodiversity and healthy diets. What, though, no teff?
  11. WorldVeg knows all about seed kits, and safety duplication.
  12. Gotta make sure those seeds are healthy, though. Here’s how CGIAR does it.