- “I think that in 20 years chocolate will be like caviar.”
- “Why should Africa be the only region in the world that is begging for food?” Hans Herren stiffs it to Jeffrey Sachs.
- Mapping, and then protecting, places where wildlife and pastoralists can survive climate change together.
- Jessica hearts Moringa. 1
- Green Wall of Trees to halt Sahara. Will any of them also be directly useful?
Nibbles: Vine, Food, Soil, Malnutrition squared, Coca
- Italians rescue forgotten grape varieties for new varietals. Diciamo “cin cin”.
- Eat up all your beets.
- LEISA magazine tells us about making soils better.
- Maps of malnutrition in Ecuador. Where are the agrobiodiversity maps to mash with them, Andy?
- “If we were to look at improving the height of children, rather than the weight, we might be able to improve this situation.”
- NatGeo video on coca marketing in Bolivia.
Nibbles: BGR, Sugarcane, Cannabis, Domestication
- Berry-go-Round 6, a plant-based blog carnival, is up. Jeremy says: “Taxonomy! Yay!“
- US uproots sugarcane, Kenya plants it. “Deciding who is right is difficult.” Er, you betcha.
- California’s largest cash crop can be an environmental disaster.
- Cassava not as nasty as its wild relatives.
Beer news
In Uganda, the Finance Ministry recently cut the tax on beers made from local ingredients. Nile Breweries responded by dropping the price of its Eagle and Eagle Extra beers, made from local sorghum.
Mr Onapito-Ekomoloit said the company was taking the move in the “interest of strengthening Uganda’s agricultural base through sorghum farmer development.â€
Win-win-win. I’ll drink to that.
Meanwhile, on another continent, a newly-brewed sorghum beer suffers “a pervasive taste of iron. Not like sucking on a rusty nail but its definitely there”.
Smell this
Will perfume smell more delicious if the labdanum in it has been scraped off the beards of Cretan goats?
Ah, how I love to meander the byways of economic biology. Who knew that Cretan rock roses (Cistus creticus) produce a resin called labdanum? That labdanum, among many other uses, is a base note in perfume not unlike the fabled ambergris? Or that the best quality labdanum is gathered adventitiously, as it were, by goats grazing on Cretan herbage (rather like that civet-cat coffee)?
I didn’t either. But now you can too, thanks to the Human Flower Project.