Category: Tourism

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The olive’s second act?

Is Xylella — cause of the olive plague that has been stalking southern Europe for a decade — a blessing in disguise for the Salento? Jeremy asks the hard questions in his latest Eat This Podcast. Spoiler alert: Silvestro Silvestori thinks it might just be:

…at the heart of Xylella and the Salento is an identity crisis, that we’re all the children of farmers, we’re all farmers ourselves. And for most people, that’s not the case any longer. And there’s not a lot of industry left here as far as farming. So I think first we have to look at ourselves in the mirror and say, what are we?

Fascinating insights throughout, so listen to the whole thing. And wonder whether this will help.

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Nibbles: Cropscapes, Ecuador cacao, Nigerian yams, Lima bean show, Mesopotamian cooking, Nepal seed banks, RNA integrity, China genebanks, Cryo comics, Greening

  1. The authors of book “Moving Crops and the Scales of History” have been awarded the Edelstein Prize 2024 for their work to “redefine historical inquiry based on the ‘cropscape’: the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop.” Let’s see how many cropscapes we can come up with today.
  2. Here’s one. The Ecuador cacao genebank gets some much-needed help.
  3. Digging into Nigerian yams. And another.
  4. Castle Hex has a programme on Lima beans on 7-8 September. Sounds like fun.
  5. What if you can’t work out what the crops are, though? As in Mesopotamian recipe books, for example.
  6. The community seed banks of Nepal have a new website. Good news for those Nepalese cropscapes.
  7. A new project is testing RNA integrity number (RIN) as a metric of seed aging for a bunch of rare wild plants. One day maybe community seed banks will be using it.
  8. China has inventoried its agricultural germplasm. Will it be applying RIN next?
  9. The French are using bandes dessinées to teach about cryopreservation of animal genetic resources. Livestockscapes?
  10. Some drylands are getting greener and some people think that’s a problem. Always something.
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Nibbles: SeedLinked, Heritage Seed Library, HarvestPlus, Enset, EBI, Saharan/Sahelian flora, Pollen, Food & climate, Food prices, Moonraker, Svalbard eats, Devex does seeds, CGRFA ABS survey

  1. SeedLinked: an app to source cool vegetable seeds. And more.
  2. Want to become a variety champion for the Heritage Seed Library? Where’s the app though?
  3. A compendium of evidence on the efficacy of biofortification from HarvestPlus. Jeremy surely available for comment?
  4. Kew celebrates efficacy of enset conservation in Ethiopia.
  5. Not sure if the Ethiopia Biodiversity Institute is in on that celebration.
  6. Some of Ethiopia is Sahelian, no? Anyway, here’s a nice piece on the forgotten, but important plants from that neck of the woods.
  7. We should all celebrate pollen banking much more.
  8. Celebrity chef worried about the effect of climate change on food.
  9. Including food prices. I dunno, maybe pollen banking will help.
  10. Or maybe even a lunar repository.
  11. Speaking of food prices, I bet this Svalbard restaurant is not cheap. Maybe there’s a nice view of the Seed Vault though. Who needs the moon?
  12. The latest Devex newsletter has lots of stuff on food prices and prizes and (non-lunar) seed vaults.
  13. Do you use any of the above for research and development? The FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture would like to hear from you.
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Nibbles: Seed video, Kew video, Indonesian cassava, Crop maps, Neglected crops, KEPHIS lab, Turkish genebank, Nepal rice, Polynesian sugarcane, Ancient beer, Garlic basics

  1. Nice video celebrating seeds.
  2. Nice old video about Kew Gardens.
  3. Tracing the origins of Indonesian cassava. No, it wasn’t introduced by Kew, but yes, colonialism was involved.
  4. Latest data on where crops are grown. Including cassava.
  5. Self Help Africa director turns on to neglected crops. Including cassava.
  6. New lab in Kenya for spreading clean crops around. Including cassava?
  7. Türkiye’s genebank in the news. No cassava.
  8. Nepalese rice gets a Welsh upgrade.
  9. Collecting sugarcane in French Polynesia to (eventually) support local booze industry.
  10. Long live the ancient booze bandwagon.
  11. Garlic 101.
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Nibbles: VACS, FAO forgotten foods, African roots, Hopi corn, Adivasis rice, Sustainable farming, Llama history, Vicuña sweaters, Portuguese cattle, Mexico genebank, NZ genebank, Bat pollination, Eat This Newsletter, WEF

  1. More on the US push for opportunity crops.
  2. Oh look there’s a whole compendium on African opportunity crops from FAO.
  3. Many of them are roots and tubers.
  4. For the Hopi, maize is an opportunity crop.
  5. For the Adivasis, it’s rice.
  6. And more along the same lines from Odisha.
  7. Llamas were an opportunity for lots of people down the ages.
  8. …and still are, for some.
  9. Portugal eschews llamas for an ancient cattle breed.
  10. I bet Mexico’s genebank offers some amazing opportunities.
  11. And New Zealand’s too.
  12. Let’s not forget bats. Yes, bats.
  13. Jeremy’s latest newsletter tackles turmeric, pepper and sweet potatoes, among other things.
  14. And the best way to frame all of the above is that the World Economic Forum wants governments to ban people from growing their own food because that causes climate change.