Podcasts

May 2, 2010May 2, 2010

Nibbles: Law, Cuba, Trout

Two radio programmes to read and/or listen to:

GE alfalfa in the dock — literally.
And an interview with Humberto Rios, Goldman Prize winner (and musician who sings the praises of mango diversity!)

Nicola at Edible Geography does an amazing number on rainbow trout, and much else besides.

March 24, 2010March 24, 2010

Nibbles: Health, China, Sustainable coffee, Citrus

Food Systems and Public Health: Linkages to Achieve Healthier Diets and Healthier Communities. Quite a mouthful…
Podcast: A Snapshot of Chinese Agriculture with Mike Mulvaney. Mouthwatering.
“…how can agricultural landscapes produce more with less impact?” The BBC tells us.
Florida’s citrus in trouble. Genomics to the rescue?

February 5, 2010February 5, 2010

Podcast on food as history

Guests Tom Standage, business affairs editor of The Economist and author of An Edible History of Humanity joined Eric Tagliacozzo, associate professor of history at Cornell University and author of Secret Trades, Porous Borders: Smuggling and States Along a Southeast Asian Frontier and award-winning culinary expert Julie Sahni, author of Classic Indian Cooking to discuss food as a driving force behind economic expansion, industrial development and geopolitical competition.

And you can listen to the podcast, courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History.

October 1, 2009October 1, 2009

Nibbles: Future farming, Chicory, Chickens, Hungarian food museum, USDA on Facebook, Ugandan discussions, Livestock food

Solutions for a Hungry World from PopSci: supercrops, C4 rice, remapping Africa and robots. But no agrobiodiversity.
The symbolism of chicory.
The backyard poultry value chain deconstructed.
The Dobos Memorial Gastronomy Museum sounds fun.
Join USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan at 3:45 pm ET on 1 October for a LIVE Facebook chat about local food systems.
One-Village-One-Product in Uganda. I call that a hostage to fortune.
Ndara, mathunzu and ngaa all that stand between drought-hit Kenyan livestock and starvation in Ukambani.

September 21, 2009September 21, 2009

Nibbles: Carotenoids, Banana diseases, Pigeons, Fisheries, Animal welfare, Camels in the Netherlands

Evaluating tomatoes for carotenoids.
Yet more on those banana diseases in Africa, this time from VOA.
Stop maligning pigeons already.
Six boffins on the fisheries crisis.
The difference between dogs and pigs.
Dutch find camels difficult. Camels no doubt return the favour.

Fresh Nibbles

What has agrobiodiversity ever done for us? Kent Nnadozie of the Plant Treaty lays it out.
Michael Frei of the HealthyDiets4Africa project doesn’t need it laid out.
Neither do the people who awarded a prize to Charlotte Allender of the UK Vegetable Genebank.
What has the US National Plant Germplasm System ever done for anyone? The Guardian, the NY Times and NPR News lay it out. I guess someone in D.C. needs it laid out, but will it make any difference?
Everyone: Potatoes in Florida! Breeders: No problem. NPGS: You called?
Here’s The Guardian again, but this time thinking it is making the case for not putting seeds in the fridge, whereas in fact it’s making the case for the complementarity of ex situ and on-farm conservation.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s a couple of pieces on community seed banks in Guatemala.
Speaking of on-farm conservation, here’s the heart-warming story of Welsh organic farmer Gerald Miles.
Meanwhile, the World Vegetable Centre opens a new genebank.
And Türkiye hosts an international, no less, olive genebank.
And genebanks can be so beautiful, like works of art. Former Tate Modern director Vicente Todolí lays out his citrus samples. I wonder what he could do with olives.
Botanic gardens are beautiful and often act a little bit like crop genebanks. Here’s an example from Portugal I stumbled onto recently, I forget how.
You know what I’d like to see? An international pepper genebank, that’s what. No, not the kind that might be in those Guatemalan community seedbanks or the WorldVeg genebank. This sort of pepper. Piper pepper.
I bet the ancient Egyptians had pepper. Egyptian archaeologist Mennat-Allah El Dorry lays out what else they had.
Maybe you could lay out world history using pepper. You can definitely do so using cacao and chocolate.
No, not using ancient DNA, but actually…

Published on April 4, 2025