Neglected species

September 24, 2007September 26, 2007

Giant swamp taro analyzed

More of one of our favourite leitmotifs. Lois Englberger tells me her team’s latest paper on variety-level nutritional composition has been accepted by the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis ¹.Â It won’t actually be out for a few months, but here’s the abstract to whet your appetite:

Continue reading “Giant swamp taro analyzed”

September 24, 2007September 24, 2007

NTFP and poverty

Collecting wild foods an “efficient method of subsistence.”

September 23, 2007

Root crops vs grains

Do we need more vegeculture? Via Tucsonivores.

September 15, 2007September 16, 2007

Pachyrhizus power

Yam bean a major high-proteinÂ starch staple?

September 13, 2007

New Agriculturist

Latest New Agriculturist: focus on non-wood forest products.

1. Grinding, fermenting, and detoxifying our way to bigger brains — an anthropologist makes the case that food processing, historically women’s work, did as much for human evolution as the mammoth-spearing got credit for.
2. Speaking of transforming raw ingredients into something civilization-defining: a Japanese temple has been quietly perfecting vegan cooking for 700 years, no marketing department required.
3. Meanwhile in the Philippines, Naturland, the international association for organic farming from Germany, is linking up with Global Seed Savers Philippines, to help farmers get their hands on indigenous crop diversity before it disappears.
4. If you want to see what “future-proofing seeds” looks like at scale, the National Soybean Germplasm Collection just turned 100: a century of squirreling away soybean diversity, just in case.
5. Kazakhstan wants in on the squirreling too: plans are moving forward for a new genebank to safeguard agricultural biodiversity across Islamic Organization for Food Security member states.
6. The University of Reading is also 100, and in celebration scientists there harvested beans from the university’s cacao collection (yes, it has a cacao collection) to make Britain’s first homegrown chocolate bar since 1932, a novelty act with a serious undertone: climate change is squeezing cocoa’s traditional growing belt.
7. And in Italy, the squeeze is already showing up on the balance sheet: Parmesan’s “Fort Knox” — $350 million of cheese squirreled away as loan collateral — is feeling the heat, with rising cooling costs and falling yields rattling wine and olive oil too.
Published on August 16, 2026