Proud to steal a great phrase when I find one, here are links to the original and two discussion — at Ethicurean and The Agricultural Law Blog — of a recent article on The Femivore’s Dilemma, about the prevalence of women in the new old food movement. Of course to my literal mind a femivore is one who eats females 1 which, of course is generally what we do. Either females or ex-males. But the more profound ideas behind the article and the commentaries are fascinating. Personally, I’m not sure that there really is a gender divide, and it would be salutary to see this in a global context. Which gives me a reason to link to this little contribution to International Women’s Day last week.
The many uses of dung
Irish botanists are using fungi that grow on cattle and sheep dung to study the history of farming in the Burren. Interesting enough in its own right, but it also reminded me that coprophagus organisms have been used in another part of the world, to the same end.
Documenting the farming transition around the world
Two recent papers shed light on that grey area where hunter-gatherers become farmers. From northern China, archaeological evidence is showing that 8,000 years ago it was highly mobile foraging bands interested in feeding not only themselves but also, interestingly, their hunting dogs, who in effect invented millet — that’s broomcorn millet (Panicum miliaceum) and foxtail millet (Setaria italica) — cultivation. This was later taken up and intensified by what are known as the Late Banpo Phase millet agriculturalists.
A thousand years previously, and half a world away, archaeological, paleoecological, linguistic and genetic data from the SW United States seems to suggest that “maize moved northward from central Mexico to [the] Southwest by being passed from one hunter-gatherer band to the next, who incorporated the crop into their subsistence economies and eventually became farmers themselves.” Not, that is, as a result of the movement of Mexican agriculturalists, which was the alternative scenario. Nothing to do with feeding their livestock in this case, though. Turkeys seem to have been domesticated much later.
Where are those haskaps anyway?
A friend was excited to see a recent Nibble about the edible blue honeysuckle berry, or haskap. Alas, as she politely pointed out, “the link goes nowhere”. Which is weird because it obviously went somewhere when we wrote about it. On checking, though, and much searching, it turns out she is right. It seems like the source was what we in the trade call a splog, a blog that is effectively nothing but spam, and I cannot find anything on the web about the 1st virtual international scientific conference about those blasted berries. So, I’m removing the link from the Nibble, but leaving the text, and adding here a couple of genuine haskap links.
There’s Haskap Canada, which has a blog, and the Plants for a Future database entry. And those links are guaranteed not dead. And if you know more about that conference, we’ll be happy to include a genuine link in future.
Food nostalgia: it is what it was
Just because nostalgia for the foods of the past isn’t a new development, doesn’t mean there aren’t real problems with the food we eat today.
Unpack that, if you can. Better yet, read the whole thing. h/t James.