- A Cuban tells us what he thinks is wrong with Cuban agriculture.
- Rahul Goswami has two long, thoughtful articles, on how India’s next five year plan is not realistic about either food or urbanisation.
- And what’s worse in the US today, drought, or heat? Do we have to choose?
- Less than 1% of Amazonia is made of Terra Preta. Is that enough? I dunno, how about you?
- Wanna buy some rice? I wonder if African rice, heirlooms and endophytes will get a look-in.
- Better bread from minor African grains. Digitaria, that is.
- Dairy Shorthorn in trouble in the UK.
Food Vendor films
IRIN, “a service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs,” has launched a new series of short films.
The Food Vendor tells the story of staple foods in different countries around the world and sheds light on the problems faced by the world’s poor in light of rising food prices.
I watched the first one, on lentils in Nepal, and found it rather tasty, so I thought I would share it here. Alas, unless I’m missing a trick, that does not seem possible. I can download it alright, and share the link on other sites, but I cannot seem to embed the movie here. Too bad, I suppose.
And if you’re into artisanal food processing, just look at the way the woman carefully wet-grinds the lentils at the start of the film.
Nibbles: Food Deserts, Garlics, Communication, Bee breeding, Millets, Sweet potatoes, Visualizing herbaria, Medieval beer
- The Economist discovers food deserts. Money quote: “some Americans simply do not care to eat a balanced diet, while others, increasingly, cannot afford to”.
- William Woys Weaver on garlics, and America, and garlic in America.
- Agricultural Communication for Development conference. Sure. But 12 days long?
- Breeding a better bee. And why not?
- Kenya Agricultural research Institute to release three new high-yielding finger millets.
- Too many sweet potato seedlings. What’s a poor breeder to do?
- A visual history of California botanizing.
- Ah, to have lived at a time when a man got most of his calories from beer! No, wait…
If they can do it in LA, why not in Kibera?
I’m gobsmacked by something that’s happening in Los Angeles. Here’s the idea:
Document your food purchases. Every 2 weeks, we’ll be asking you to record your purchases of a different food type. We’ll send you an email to let you know what it is. So, during the fortnight that the food type is bananas, every time you buy a banana, whether you’re at the supermarket, filling up at a petrol station, or grabbing breakfast to go at a coffee shop, we want you to whip out your phone, open Foodprint LA: Bananas in Kullect, 1 take a quick photo of your banana(s), enter the price, choose from a list of vendors, and contribute your individual banana purchase data to help create a bigger picture of the Los Angeles banana-scape. Repeat step 3 as many times as you buy bananas during that two-week banana-data Kullection.
Why?
We’ll take the data (anonymised, of course), analyse it for patterns and insights, and create data visualisations — infographics, maps, and charts — that we can share with everyone who wants to understand the city’s foodscape a little bit better.
The resulting data won’t replace a rigorous foodshed study in the city’s planning process, of course. Nonetheless, we think that crowd-sourcing the data-gathering process and then mining the resulting information to tell stories and ask new questions will be a fun way to build awareness and encourage conversation about where the Los Angeles’ food actually comes from.
That has to be doable in Kibera, or anywhere that people are struggling to access good food. And think of the insights. My head is spinning …
Nibbles: Nutritional diversity, CFFRC, Heritage wheat,
- Functional diversity: a new tool to assess the nutritional diversity of African cropping systems.
- Crops for the Future welcomes the official launch of the Crops for the Future Research Center. At last.
- At home with the Heritage Wheat Conservancy.