A bunch of French research organizations have got together into a Groupement d’Intêret Scientifique on “Local Agri-Food Systems.” And the latest volume of Cahiers Agricultures is dedicated to the subject. The articles are free and in French, but with summaries in English.
Someone is wrong on the internet
Vigilant as ever, duty calls. There’s a slim chance you may see an article in French about the famed Tuscan cabbage known as cavolo nero. It is my sad responsibility to tell you that bits of it are mistaken. 1 Most important, the photo is certainly not cavolo nero. If it were, it would hardly match her description. Cavolo nero is much more of a kale than a hearted cabbage, and if you were to look in the market for something resembling her picture (which looks to me like a very ordinary Savoy cabbage, or verza), you would not be getting the authentic black Tuscan kale.
Our picture, which is definitely the real thing, is from Geomangio at flickr; I can’t easily find one of the whole plant.
Gorge yourself on chocolate…videos
The great How Stuff Works website has a whole series of videos on how to make chocolate. If only the World Cacao Federation had got in touch with them!
Beyond ugali and matharu
“[T]raditional vegetables are considered ‘backward’ and tend to be sold in poor neighbourhoods under unhygienic conditions.”
Er, yes, but that’s changing. So Kenyans who do want to follow the advice in a recent op-ed in the Daily Nation and change their diet should find it easier and pleasanter to do so.
Genebanks not (yet) trendy
WorldFish has a new blog, focusing on spatial data. It’s only been going a few months, but it looks like it may well have some interesting stuff of relevance to agrobiodiversity. One of its early posts reminded me of something I’ve wanted to do for a while, and that is use Google Trends to look at interest in genebanks. In particular, I wanted to know whether all the news about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has excited people about genebanks in general. Apparently, not.
The various spikes in interest in Svalbard do not seem to have resulted in increasing searches for “genebank” or “seed bank.” At least not that you can yet see clearly. Here’s hoping…