Category: Policy

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The perils of diversification

Alex Tiller forecasts a price spike in the cost of salads and melons in the US this summer as a result of a drought in California’s Central Valley. Farmers are abandoning those crops to save water for even more valuable crops, like almonds. Tiller suggests that

The coming cost spikes in lettuce and melon may provide incentives for growers outside the “melon belt” to invest in the production of these popular fruit and vegetable crops.

Right. But unless those farmers can fashion some kind of new deal with their buyers they’ll be able to kiss goodbye to their investment and their income just as soon as California gets another normally wet season, which it will, soon enough. Prices will plummet, and the buyers will abandon (more) local suppliers to save a couple of cents. You mark my words.

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Nibbles: Aquaculture, Geographical indications, Arable, Beetlejuice

  • First Nation takes Canada to court over its salmon stocks. Lawyers exult.
  • “Radicchio di Verona”, “Zafferano di Sardegna,” “Aceite de La Alcarria” and “Huîtres Marennes Oléron” protected. Lawyers exult.
  • Germans to set aside 100 fields to conserve Caucalido-Adonidetum flammeae and the like. That’s arable weeds to me and you. Nobody exults. Oh come on, some of them might be crop wild relatives!
  • Beetle threatens Florida avocado orchards with deadly fungus. Mexico exults?
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Nibbles: Coffee, Barley, Sheep, Diary, Ancient chocolate, South African wine, Pleistocene Gibraltar, Roads

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Indigenous pasta sauces

I don’t think we nibbled it here, but I did post on Facebook a news story about how Italy is thinking of banning ethnic restaurants. This elicited more comments than I usually get. One friend said he’d send me a kebab in the mail. I politely declined, citing health concerns. Another suggested such a ban would be a good idea, as most ethnic restaurants in Italy are terrible, even when — or is it because — they absorb local ingredients and ways of doing things. ((As dissected so admirably for Chinese restaurants by the writer Jennifer 8. Lee (李競) in a recent, wonderful, TED talk.)) My wife wondered whether the move might set off tit-for-tat bans on Italian restaurants — including pizzerias ((Talking about absorbing local ingredients, is there a more spongiferous food than the pizza?)) — around the world. And another commenter wondered what Italian cuisine would be like if pasta sauces featured only indigenous agrobiodiversity. That means no tomatoes. One sauce that I could think of that is composed solely of ingredients that could be said to be native to Italy — whatever that might mean — is pesto. Anyway, one thing is for certain, such a cuisine would probably drive me to kebabs.