Posts

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Two fried oyster po-boys to go!

Our attempt to gauge the effect of the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico on agrobiodiversity was pretty pathetic, really. Not so, predictably, Gary Nabhan’s. In an article in Grist, he announces that “the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) alliance will release a comprehensive checklist of over 240 place-based foods of the Gulf Coast that are now at risk — 138 of them directly affected by the oil spill.” 1 As a companion piece in Grist points out, accompanied by luscious photos, the best way to help these threatened foodways is to keep eating Gulf seafood:

…perceptions to the contrary, not all Gulf fisheries are closed. Plenty of shrimp, shellfish, and other seafood that have been greenlighted by the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program are still making it to market. The problem is that consumers are afraid to buy them. Well, fear not. Safeguards are in place — including federal oil-sniffers!

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Recipes then and now

And here’s another of those serendipitous juxtapositions that the tubes are so great at producing, if you’re on the alert for them. A blog on historical American recipes on one side. And, on the other, how African specialty foods are infiltrating current gastronomy. Good to see this penetration of the international market, of course, but truth to tell, not many of said specialty foods are very African, apart from having being grown there. When will we see Swahili dishes go mainstream in the US or Europe, say, or finger millet porridge, or fried plantain? The way the marula fruit has.

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The diversity of cattle on display

If you like pictures of the diversity of cattle, the last few days must have seemed like Christmas and you birthday rolled into one. It all started with a gem from Jim Richardson in the Highlands of Scotland. Then there was the fascinating article on “holistic management” of rangelands in Zimbabwe. And finally today news of the re-opening of the Altamira Caves, and of an exhibition of rather more recent paintings in Rome.

LATER: Ooooh, and ancient cattle products too.

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Mapping data in the CGIAR

I took my own advice and followed Africa Agriculture GIS Week on both the live video feed and Twitter yesterday, in particular the session on the CGIAR. Very interesting stuff going on all over the place, but you do have to wonder about communication within the system. Because on the one hand you have the CGIAR pulling together and mapping their and other people’s genebank data in the monumental effort that is GeneSys. And on the other you have CIMMYT producing a very neat online Wheat Atlas. And did really nobody think of putting the two together? I guess that’s one of the reasons why the CGIAR needs restructuring.

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Trying to speed things up

Apologies for our rather spare look. We’ve been having a lot of trouble with the site over the past few weeks, mostly being very slow to respond. I’ve tried everything, but I’m really rather out of my depth. In an effort to get to the bottom of the problem we’re going right back to basics and removing all the bells and whistles. If that helps, maybe we’ll add some of them back in, slowly. If there are any you particularly miss, shout.