- At last, sustainable clarinets!
- Hummus war gets serious. All that seratonin not helping?
- “Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men.” Simon Schama on Quercus robur. Note to BBC: learn how to write species names.
- Pop quiz: Some 20,000 tons of this seed were delivered by Aztec farmers in annual tribute to their emperor, Montezuma. Now big in the US, according to NYTimes piece. From 1984.
Nibbles: Conservation, Women, Subsidies, Bees, Microbes, Rhizobia, Genebanks, Chicken history, Nordic genebank
- Academics say conservation of biodiversity does not benefit the poor. Maybe they’re talking about the wrong kind of biodiversity?
- Innovation of the Week: Feeding Communities by Focusing on Women. I think my irony detector may be on the fritz.
- All you ever wanted to know about farm subsidies in the US. h/t Food Politics.
- The Bittersweet Dreams of Uruguay’s Beekeepers. Sad.
- State microbes! Really fun, and informative. Any better ideas?
- More microbes: The evolution of nitrogen fixation. Absolutely fascinating.
- Slideshow on genebanks in southern Africa.
- Pre-Columbian, Polynesian chickens in Chile not Polynesian and probably not pre-Columbian. Blast! Why must fun theories always run up against the brick wall of facts?
- NordGen’s annual report: crops, forests, livestock.
Nibbles: Sorghum, Microbes, Seeds, Biofortification, Spent grain, Fermentation, Fisheries, Millennium Villages, Cooking fish
- All the cool crops are doing it. Sorghum has a Facebook page. Any others?
- Soil microbes showing “increasing antibiotic resistance“.
- Big, expensive, new Seed Tech Institute for East Africa. I’m suspending judgement. h/t CAS-IP
- New Agriculturalist does the AgroSalud thing: biofortified staples.
- Speaking of which, you can biofortify chapatis with distillers grains. But what will the livestock eat?
- More fermentation goodness.
- Cobia is the new cod.
- Nutrition in the Millennium Villages.
- NW USA seafood recipes have moved up the foodchain in last 100 years, because rarer and more expensive.
Nibbles: Date gin, Papaya, Grains, Swiss cheese, Mini-horse
- Sudan’s date-gin brewers thrive despite Sharia. There’s date gin? h/t Brendan.
- A very interesting account of virus resistant papayas.
- Whole grains are good for you. And could be better.
- Swiss cow culture.
- Like pocket pigs? You’re gonna love the pocket horse.
Nibbles: Figs, strawberries, seed bombs, micronutrients^2, conservation, saffron
- Lloyd Kreizter gives a fig. And then some.
- Strawberries for spacepeople?
- Calling all garden guerillas. You can now buy seed bombs.
- Nicola at Edible Geography takes orange-fleshed people to a whole new level.
- BMGF takes photo story of orange-fleshed sweet potatoes to a whole new level.
- How to preserve biodiversity: take a cutting of it.
- Kashmiri saffron is beset on all sides … but help is at hand.