- Brewers vertically integrate themselves. Like Snoopy Miller.
- They met, we ate.
- Roman garden recreated in Wales, complete with leeks.
- “There are around 45,000 different uses for hemp.”
- Drawing the ecotarian line.
- Cuban urban agriculture sprouts anew after Ike.
- List of farmers markets in the US. Luigi asks: where’s the GoogleMaps mashup?
French man saves seeds in India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQBfwF0TVQ
I found this in a post at the Permaculture Research Institute, USA. The video is rather good, I reckon, although there were a couple of parts where I disagreed with the subtitling. More worrying, I think, is the sub-text. Do the Indians need a foreigner to teach them to save seeds? To get them access to traditional varieties from all over, that they can then trial in their own systems. Why no mention of the fact that what Stephan Fayon is doing in India, he could not do legally in France? Kokopelli India is an offshoot of Kokopelli Seed Foundation, which is a US vehicle to support the aims of Association Kokopelli in France. Amazingly, Association Kokopelli has had nothing new to say about its euros 35,000 fine for “unfair trading” since the fine was levied. It’s all very odd.
Harlan II – Field trip
Robert Hijmans puts his money where his mouth is.
I took the train to Berkeley, less than two hours from Davis towards San Francisco. I checked in at the French hotel and dined in the restaurant across the street. We are talking about Alice Waters’ place, Chez Panisse a restaurant well known to the readers of this blog and in-flight magazines.
There is the formal restaurant downstairs (fully booked) and the café upstairs (a late table was available). I had wine made of Zinfandel grapes. ((Quintessential Napa, only recently discovered to be the Croatian variety “Crljenak Kasteljanski” — or so I learned at Harlan II.))
I took the US$29 fixed menu. It had a garden lettuce salad, spaghetti alla Norma with eggplant, tomato, basil, and ricotta salata, and a Concord grape sherbet with roasted Thompson seedless grapes and langues de chat. ((Sic. Why the mix of English, Italian and French?))
These were the variety names on today’s menu: Concord grape, Thompson seedless grapes, and Little Gems lettuce.
And these were the farm names on the menu: Cannard Farm ((As in: “Cannard Farm rocket with shaved zucchini, pine nuts, and pecorino, $9.00”)), Andante Dairy, Soul Food Farm, Marin Sun Farm, Lagier Ranches, and Frog Hollow Farm.
Terroir trumps agrobiodiversity at Alice’s place.
It is a good restaurant. It is very French. The waiter spoke of terroir as if his name were Claude Duchateu. It is very cheap for a famous restaurant. It has a local twist to it. The food is good. But is mainstream now. The menu in the Davis Best Western Palm Court was not that different.
I suppose it is fair what everybody says, that Alice created some sort of revolution. From the wasteland of the American diner to Good Food. Just like her neighbor Alfred Peet transformed mainstream American coffee from diluted sewage to the best coffee anywhere save (perhaps) Italy. But that is ancient history.
But, just for your information, Chez Panisse is passé now. Go look somewhere else. I have heard of an underground restaurant movement in New York.
Chez Panisse is sold out every night, I think. Alice can experiment. But she does not. She chooses the middle of the road. Their produce comes from “farms, ranches, and fisheries guided by principles of sustainability” but the majority of entrees (main dishes) are a fish or meat dish.
Chuck out the meat. Serve different varieties of other veggies than tomatoes (even the Andronico’s supermarket across the street sells heirlooms). Use something locally evolved rather than merely locally grown. The native Californians used hundreds of edible plants. ((Full disclosure: After being captured and given the opportunity, Ishi, the last ‘wild’ Californian Indian, quickly switched to a doughnut diet.)) But no miner’s lettuce or acorns on the menu of the Queen of Slow Food. Come on, Alice, surprise me!
P.S. That pasta was really good though. I will go back tomorrow to further investigate the case.
Nibbles: Tangled Bank, Uganda, Swaziland, Agroforestry, Aquaculture, Potato
- Tangled Bank 114 is up at Science made Cool.
- More young people should be involved in agriculture.
- More rich people should be involved in agriculture.
- More trees should be involved in agriculture.
- Carp have been involved in agriculture for a long time. At least in Japan.
- In depth look at potato numbers.
True That Chez Panisse Woman
Luigi homed right in on the money quote when he nibbled an Economist article about changed foodways in one small part of America:
35 years ago, I was bringing seeds from France to California. Now I’m bringing seeds back to my friends in France.
Alice Waters, founder of the fabled Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley and the soffrito of the US food movement, with a pithy sound bite. But what does it mean? The Economist quotes other luminaries to suggest that the Europeans are defending a food culture while the Americans are building one, whatever that means, but doesn’t actually unpack why the trade in seeds should have reversed direction. ((Long-time readers will realize that I am about to rail against The System. They can move smartly along. New readers, start here.))
I can think of two reasons.
First, plant breeders in the US have been busy at work creating new varieties that are particularly suited for the loving local care now being lavished on food. That certainly is true. I know of a few examples, some of whose wares are being grown in Europe.
Secondly, and more likely, varieties that French gardeners and growers developed and nurtured are no longer freely available in France. They successfully made a new life in the New World, and now, like lots of older first generation immigrants, they’re coming home on an assisted passage in Ms Waters’ luggage.
European regulations guarantee that seed you buy will be distinct, uniform and stable and will actually be what it says it is. America and all other countries often have a similar system for those who want it, but they’re also willing to let growers take their chances on an unregistered variety. In Europe, it’s registered seed or nothing. Even the latest regulations, to permit the marketing of so-called conservation varieties, do nothing to encourage further development. They simply preserve in aspic seeds that can be grown by besmocked jolly peasant farmers, equally pickled.
I’m a little surprised that the staunchly free-market Economist has not itself had a go at the monolithic European regulations, and I would have said so there. Alas, comments at high-traffic web sites are almost uniformly unreadable, a perfect example of Sturgeon’s Law in action. Perhaps I’ll just pop in to link to this. ((And hope that the traffic it drives by won’t wreck the high tone of our own comments. Obscurity has its benefits. Later … Blast! The Economist, rightly probably, allows no links in comments. Ah well, maybe readers will find us anyway.))