The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

I think all of us can agree that 2016 had a bit of a rough run. It was politically charged; it was tragic and sorrowful; it was also beautiful in many ways; and I hope it will open the door to some much needed healing in the year to come. Holding with tradition for the eighth year running, I put together a bit of a recap of the past year seen through the eyes of My Munchable Musings.

This year seemed particularly replete with environmental and social grievances, as if the Anthropocene - the age of Homo sapiens - had finally come into its own. Despite international efforts to overcome poverty and injustice, we are still battling inequalities reminiscent of bygone eras. This was my fifth year Living Below the Line, contemplating the trade-offs the food insecure face in terms of costs, calories, and nutrition. Perhaps a product of my own news filters - thanks selection bias and algorithms for reinforcing our bubbles - but there also seemed to be considerable coverage of human-induced environmental problems and social justice issues. Imminent climate change catastrophes made late headlines, victims of environmental exploitation made small waves, and the world watched rather silently (or preoccupied) loss of human rights and dignity. Thanks Twitter for making the world's atrocities so much more accessible (and Storify for allowing me to rehash it all).

Going back through my actual blog posts from the year, however, there seemed to be much more to celebrate. In true Munchable fashion, we took a bit of a tour through through the beauty of biodiversity and food, at the intersection where art and agriculture collide. About halfway through the year, a challenge to compile a week of photos depicting beauty in nature made its way around the interwebs. A lunchtime conversation spurred a post on the amazing tuber diversity. And of course I could not go a full year without pontificating on the joys inherent in the art of bread-baking. These may seem like small potatoes, but to me they seem more like beacons of hope amidst stormy weather.

  

Finally, this year saw many developments here at command central. At the end of January, I left the damp of England after 2.5 years and moved to Australia in order to continue the over-education process. On the two month journey between the two Commonwealth countries, I made a second transcontinental rail trip to see immediate family in the US, followed by a first foray into Southeast Asia (including some history lessons and another train trip). Starting the PhD has helped me finally come to terms with my identity NOT as an ecologist, but as intentionally straddling disciplines (good luck with that...).

Mid-way through the year, I did some stock-taking as a 30th birthday exercise. Almost as a physical reminder of this aging, I proceeded to tear my ACL and menisci (...lesson to all that gymnastics takes hours of training, particularly when you are no longer 17). To ensure the year ended on a high note, I scheduled in my first surgery and overnight stay at a hospital the week before Christmas. I suppose out of necessity, the new year will be one of recovery, and not just for me, but hopefully more broadly from all the cruelty, divisiveness, and hatred that has taken place recently. Here's to a more enlightened 2017.

Read Years Passed

Another Decade, Another Degree - 2015

One Hodge-Podge of a Year - 2014

New Year's Resolution - 2013

A Year in Food - 2012

New Year, Empty Fridge - 2011

A New Year's Resolution - 2010

It's a New Year! - 2009

Seven Years: A Blogiversary Post and Squash

On October 15th 2009,  I wrote the first substantive post on this blog (although technically My Munchable made its debut on the 11th). Under that third Blog Action Day's (BAD) theme of climate change, the logical subject was growing food, having recently returned from working on a small organic farm. Since then, we have cycled through a variety of topics from water resources to human rights and equality. However, this year there is no official theme; the organizers have suggested writing on "whatever you are most passionate about". Oh, no problem, there are only like a million things I feel passionate about (ok, exaggeration...). But then two things happened: World Food Day announced its theme of climate change adaptation and this article ran in the New York Times. We've come full circle.

The article introduces Sarah Frey, a midwestern farmer who just happens to be the largest supplier of pumpkins in the U.S. But what made news is her effort to shift public perception of pumpkins from ornamental to edible, to bring variety back to winter squash. Every now and then I muse about starting a pumpkin farm. While mostly in jest (unless you know of any eligible young farmers...), this draw to growing things stems not only from the physical connectedness to the land, but also an appreciation for the beauty and necessity of diversity among what we grow.

So I wanted to spend the rest of this post talking about just that - the vast potential of we can grow. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, over 250,000 types of plants have been document to grown in agricultural systems, yet a mere 3% are actually in use today. To further restrict that, three quarters of our food comes from just 12 crops, and rice, wheat, and maize comprise the bulk of that.

Now say instead this represented the collective expanse of wild plants and animals on the planet, and you were an ecologist or a conservation scientist. This would be tragic; people would be outraged that so much biodiversity had been allowed to ebb away. On one hand, this means the loss of considerable genetic diversity, reducing the chance of traits and mutations that might better suit a shift in climate or ecology. On the other hand, a focus of breeding efforts and training on just a handful of crops has probably contributed to the erosion of local diets. In some cases this has improved nutrition and reduced the prevalence of undernourishment related ailments (e.g. vitamin A deficiency and blindness), but in many instances this is leading to homogenization of diets. Our ubiquitous staples also seem to have very particular requirements in terms of optimal growing conditions - water, nutrients, etc. - that make them not-so-very adaptable to inter-annual variation and change over time.a

Wayward cabbage among squashes at Borough Market

So if we're talking about agriculture and climate change, a lot of the arguments around maintaining biodiversity go back to resilience theory - building redundancy into agriculture as an insurance mechanism. But back to the pumpkins. These thick-skinned orbs are not exactly at the heart of food security; yet it's hard to imagine the beauty of diversity more evident than in this collection of colourful cucurbites. While relegated to three species, the hundreds of varietals of Cucurbita maxima, moschata, and pepo span all sorts of shapes, sizes and shades. In the grocery store you may see only the typical butternut, acorn, and occasional spaghetti (unless you're in Oz, and Kents and Blues seem particularly prevalent), as with so many food crops the industry has downsized and streamlined. But pumpkins may also be at risk due to climate change. Perhaps we shouldn't let diversity slide too far; a little nudge from consumer demand may go a long way.

Finally, with Halloween only a couple of weeks off, it's also important to make sure your pumpkin doesn't contribute to climate change! Make sure to compost the remains...or better yet, cook it up before it goes off.

Read Previous B.A.D. Posts

BAD 2015: Vocal Consumers and Silent Producers

BAD 2014: BAD Inequality: EnGendering a Resilient Future

BAD 2013: Les Droits Humains

BAD 2012: A Collective Vote with Our Forks

BAD 2011: At What Cost?

BAD 2010: Water

BAD 2009: Weeding Down Climate Change

What We Call Potatoes

If I had to go back and do it all over again, I'd probably be an ethnobotanist. Oh sure, the career path is a bit more limited, and I probably would have tired of plants after a bit, but something about tying together history, culture, and ecology gets me really jazzed. The field of ethnobotany examines the relationship between plants and people, situating plants within societies and humans within ecosystems. But we're not talking about just any botany; it's the stuff we end up eating that is fascinating.

Lunchtime conversations in my department range from the completely random and truly bizarre to classic ecology nerdiness. Yesterday veered more toward the latter and ended somewhere in between, when  my unassuming purple sweet potato instigated a discussion on what is potato. 'That's taro, right?' 

Ok, so according to the International Potato Center, a potato (Solanum tuberosum) – part of the nightshade family along with eggplant and tomatoes - is a species native to the Andean region of South America composed of 4,500 varieties and consumed by people for about 10,000 years. Now in third place in terms of crops of global importance for human consumption (and more limited to a small subset of this vast gene pool), this genetic diversity and cultural, climatic, and ecological specificity persist in the Andean heart. It's not all sunshine and roses, though, and potatoes proved to be front and centre of such tragedies as the Great Famine in Ireland - in which the monochromatic landscape of 'lumper' potatoes presented fertile ground for a devastating fungal blight.

Now sweet potato is a separate genus (Ipomeoea batatas) – hailing from the morning-glory family – but is also from Latin America. Contrary to my initial understanding, it is not a tuber (a thickened stem) but a “storage root”. It was one of the big botanical travelers, probably hitching a ride with Polynesian sailors to the Pacific Islands. Eventually it hit Japan and radiated throughout Asia. High in vitamin A, the sweet potato has more recently found itself a favourite staple introduced to Africa for nutritional improvement. And while batata (one of its names) may sound similar to patata, the sweet potato is most definitely not.

Taro, a not particularly notable-looking tuber, also belongs to another genus (Colocasia esculenta), although in some languages it is called a type of ‘potato’ (e.g. itchy potato in Vietnamese and village potato in Japanese). Thought to have originated in South Asia (India, Nepal, Bangladesh), taro has spread widely throughout Oceania and the Pacific, embedding itself in culture and tradition. For instance, Hawa'iian folklore has the ancestral human and the first seed of taro as siblings, borne of the sky father and earth mother. 

Deceptively plain from the outside, sweet potatoes as art!

Finally, yams - no not those deep orange gems eaten at Thanksgiving - are also from a different genus (Dioscorea, spp) and are indigenous to West Africa (although one species originated in Asia). After cassava, it is the most cultivated root/tuber crop in Africa. A central part of people's diets for upwards of 10,000 years, yams have also found their place as symbols for marriage and fertility. And if you're around Ghana or Nigeria next month, there is a 'Yam Festival' in celebration of the rainy season ending and the harvest commencing.

Botanically speaking, these four are all very different; my purple sweet potato is not a taro or a yam, or I guess even a potato for that matter. But I suppose culturally, they have similar preparations and culinary manifestations as a result of common characteristics as starchy staples. The astounding thing is how far each has travelled, and how non-native crops have immersed themselves so thoroughly that they become invaluable, pivotal in traditions and diets, and imbued with their own local significance and names. 

Further Reading: 

How the Potato Changed the World (Smithsonian Magazine 2011)
How the Sweet Potato Crossed the Pacific Way Before Europeans Did (NPR 2013)
A Map of Where Your Food Originated May Surprise You (NPR 2016)

Can Biodiversity and Development Ever Get Along?

It’s the 14^th celebration of the International Day of Biological Diversity, with the theme of sustainable development. I feel like these ‘days’ often focus on the developing world, the hotspots of biodiversity in the tropics, how we can ensure that ‘nature’ remains intact as incomes grows and standards of living improve. But the past week has caused me to think much more about biodiversity and America’s not-so-sustainable development.

Wheat fields of central Montana

As you know from my last post, I spent the better part of Saturday through Tuesday on cross-country trains. For miles on Monday afternoon we passed immense monoculture of wheat. The park service docents who hopped onboard at the border of Montana pointed out the occasional pronghorn or fox that dotted the landscape (though I was hard-pressed to see where they might make their permanent residence). Yet this vast swath of grain at one point was prairie grassland, an often underappreciated and misunderstood biome. It was home to bighorn sheep, wolves, grizzly bears, and elk up until the early 20^th century. According to The Nature Conservancy, over the last 25 years 25 million acres of grassland has been lost and conversion to cropland stands as its greatest threat. As one docent informed, even up until the drought (AKA Dust Bowl) in the 1920/30’s, homesteaders maintained a relatively diverse holding of different wheat varieties, hay and fodder fields (for their draft animals, of course), and home gardens. After water scarcity downsized the pool of farmers, the State’s wheat market consolidated to a ‘family-owned’ corporate system that now dominates most agricultural production in the US.

Early 20th c. logging around Lake Sammamish

So there’s your agricultural example of unsustainable and anti-biodiversity development. But the harder hitting case for me rests much closer to home, and involves Washington ecosystems, including its forests, which house a sizable array of plants and animals. Just a little background – I grew up in a suburban plateau outside Seattle, on the cusp of rural Puget Sound and surrounded by floodplain farmland. The road running from Redmond to Issaquah (through the not yet founded city of Sammamish) looked like a page out of national park brochure when we first moved to the area 27 years ago (though the irony is the area was heavily logged in the late 19^th century…). It has changed at a frightening pace in my lifetime; however that didn’t make the vision of rapid development from my bus window yesterday any less heart-rending. What were hillsides of evergreen ecosystems not more than five or ten years ago, have been reduced to an assortment of townhouses, big box franchises, and roads. This mode and rapidity of development embodies a lifestyle reliant on fossil fuels and focused on consumption, while insensitive to the long-standing culture and character of the area.

So while I applaud the United Nations’ attempts to tie together awareness on biodiversity and sustainable development, I mourn a lost opportunity to look more broadly at the challenges inherent in development. We need to really think long and hard about the tradeoffs between our current consumption patterns (particularly in the ‘developed’ world) and diversity - whether that's in ecosystems, flora and fauna and crop varieties, or even the types of transnational enterprises that seem to coincide with the process of development. 

Photo credits: (top) me! (bottom) Sammamish Heritage Society.

A Cultural Landscape

Greetings from the Canarian island of Tenerife! As part of my graduate programme, my class has migrated down to this Spanish Atlantic volcanic isle off the coast of North Africa to learn about conservation and management in this island context. Since that has been tiring to say the least, I'm keeping this short and sweet. One of the topics we've discussed while busing around from park to park is the change in landscape character over the past sixty years. During that time, the main industry has shifted from agriculture employing 73% of the population (now only 3%) to cheap European tourist packages dominating.

Among many other consequences of this transition, has been the abandonment an development of agricultural land. Taking a look at a traditional cross-section of the island, you would see costal fishing, inland terraced agriculture on the rich volcanic soils, and then goat herding in the steep upland hillsides. Today, the goats remain to some extent, but most traditional agriculture is gone, while some banana and other export crops remain.

While this rapid erosion of traditional systems and landscape character seems rather depressing, I was also intrigued to learn that many of the cultivars grown in what remains of small scale farms are local endemic varieties. Potato types may be found nowhere else in the world. Vineyards are popping up and defining distinct Canarian wines. With a little infusion of interest and a spark of demand, perhaps farming on this island full of a rich diversity of ecosystems will rejuvenate its long agricultural tradition. For now, I just have these mediocre photos!

My Munchable Soapbox: We All Eat the Same...

It's nice to believe we are all unique, in some way, right? Well, we're not. Or rather, what people around the globe eat is not, and is becoming less so as agricultural production systems homogenize. According to new research by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), "it's official". Diets are converging around a select few foods, because agricultural production around the world is shifting to the same particular set of crops. 

The galaxy of diets converging. Is this how systems die?

While I don't find this particularly surprising, there is one element that piqued my interest. From the perspective of someone who studies biodiversity, this seems to be a case of comparing alpha (within system) and beta (between systems) diversity. Plain speak? Apparently, individual countries now have more pages in their menus. The dominance of one food staple is becoming less common. Cool, so I can live in the US and eat my mango, too! But, if we examine how the range of crops produced varies from country to country, it's evident that the composition of what we are consuming is trending toward similarity. And these follow the base of Standard Western Diets (or Standard American Diet - SAD - because it has a better acronym) and primarily consist of ingredients for processing (e.g. oils, wheat, rice, etc.). I mean, this makes sense; these are also the crops for which money has gone into varietal improvements, technology development, and industrialisation.

The paper does point out a couple of drawbacks with the loss of global diversity. For one, SAD is quite depressing, as it is linked with many diseases of afluency - namely obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. Many of these ailments are receiving recognition as global concerns. On the more agronomic side of things, decreased overall diversity is worrisome for the potential future implications. Having agrobiodiversity and a suite of plant genetic resources from which to pull traits and adapt to shifts in condition is considered pretty central to adaptation discussions. And we are undermining our very ability to cope with very likely climatic and other biotic changes. Time Magazine, of course, pulls out the banana example as to why this homogenization is a problem, and the dangers from pests and diseases wiping out our ability to feed a planet-ful of people.

I will leave you on that note to chew on for a bit. Really interesting study. Will the results be compelling enough to spur change? I'm sold!

Friday Coffee Break: Where Food Comes From

So maybe for those of you in the States this is a coffee break, but I'm about to scurry off to make dinner. And in so doing, I also got to thinking about where that food comes from. No, I'm not talking about my local market, or the region of Spain where those grapes flew in from. I'm think more along the lines of long-term evolution of crop diversity! In one of my lectures this first week of classes (!), we looked a lot at geologic time scales, and then more in-depth into the last 10,000 years - the post-agrarian revolution Earth. As such, I was ecstatic to wander across this nifty map and toolkit for discovering the origins and current state of our agriculture diversity! These types of reflective resources always get me; the hot spots of poverty and the seats of current political unrest (and what we perceive as terrorist inclinations) are in fact also "the cradlee of agriculture and home to the first farmers." Well, there's food for thought.

My Munchable Soapbox: Give Me a Break

But seriously, Kit Kat Bars have gotten a bad rap the past few years. A media campaign by Green Peace in 2010 alerted the world to Nestle's use of palm oil, a commodity at the root of much recent tropical deforestation, in products such as Kit Kat Bars. This reputational smudge prompted, much as it eventually did for Girl Scout cookies, a shift in corporate commitments towards sustainable sourcing of palm oil. While large food and beverage companies use only a tiny fraction of total palm oil (most goes to biofuel right now), this sets a precedent for the other big players in the industry to follow. 

Now Kit Kat has taken another big step - certifying cocoa "Fair Trade" - in its West Africa sourcing area and set to expand into more of Latin America. The Nestle Cocoa Plan involves training farmers in sustainable practices, improving cocoa production, supporting new schools and community projects, and providing a price premium for farmers. Similar pressure from consumers prompted Coca Cola down the path to becoming one of the leaders in water stewardship.

So why am I bringing all of this up? Well today is International Day for Biological Diversity, a celebration led by the United Nations and International Union for the Conservation of Nature. For major commodities or large corporations, agricultural production can have negative impacts on biodiversity, by losing forested habitat or degrading land already growing crops. But these stories also demonstrate how much stock companies place in their corporate image. This mean power in the consumers' hands...what you buy matters :)

Ok, that's all. Signing off!

My Munchable Soapbox: Coffee Kills...

Token lemur photo (Milne-Edward's Sifaka)

...monkeys. Well, at least that is according to a blog post on Scientific American. And, in fact, the monkey in question is specifically the black-handed spider monkey (and not the lemur to the left...), which lives in Central American forest canopies. Why is the blog post author's cuppa joe killing this monkey? Not surprisingly, the destruction of forest for coffee plantations (probably in addition to all the other multitude of drivers of deforestation) is at the heart of the matter.

But besides the coffee bean threat, the article gets at the deeper issue - be it coffee in Costa Rica, oil palm plantations in Indonesia, or mining in Madagascar - global economic demand for commodities drives habitat destruction and ultimately threatens cute, fuzzy, charismatic megafauna. Ok, I'm not advocating for everyone in the world to stop buy 'stuff.' But at its core, this article is actually about the loss of species. The author argues, "this loss of biodiversity may be the single largest environmental change we humans are foisting on our home planet, outpacing even climate change."

So, going back to the coffee example. Standards, such as those employed in certifications like Rainforest Alliance, are presented as the only option currently available for gaining information about the ethics of your coffee. This may have some grain of truth, and Rainforest Alliance does promote both ecosystem health and social wellbeing. But more importantly, it feeds into one of the author's main solutions - you know, just revamp corporations so that they are socially and environmentally responsible. Some companies are starting to do this (such as Starbucks and Nestle) with Business for Social Responsibility, or assessing their impact with an Ecosystem Services Review (pioneered by World Resources Institute and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development).

As I get ready to head off to Costa Rica in a week, for a little vacation/tropical agriculture exploration, I can't help but think about how the coffee industry and eco-tourism can go hand-in-hand in this country. No answers yet (and still working out details of the trip, if you have suggestions or particularly farm contacts), but my hope is upon returning I will have a little more insight and a fresh perspective on our consumption-driven environmental degradation. Now go eat a bar of chocolate and think this over...

What's Cooking? A Bean of a Different Color

I think I may be experiencing a bit of blogger fatigue. Not a serious case, or anything, and it is luckily not contagious. Perhaps it is because my work life has been revolving around blogs for the past month. Or maybe it's because I am having such a difficult time finding information on the cultural and ecological history of beans!

Black beans, red kidney beans, white cannelinis. These common legumes are only a small sampling of what is available for the eating. But there is a wide world of beans out there. One particular bean I've unearthed is called Anasazi - a slightly sweeter and more easily-digestible native American bean named for the Pueblo Indians. The back story of the bean is still shrouded a bit in mystery, but we do know that they were likely cultivated back thousands of years! We are talking pre-Columbian Americas, here. I will save my musings about the merits of heirloom varieties for another day, but let me just note how exciting it is to have the amazing variety of beans from which we can choose...rather than always falling back on the same old same old...

Here's a dish that celebrates the traditional companion planting - the three sisters: beans, squash, and maize - forming a symbiotic relationship. The maize provides a base on which the beans can climb; the beans fix nitrogen in the soil; the squash leaves block out weeds; and together they provide the complete suite of amino acids!

Anasazi Stew
1/2 jar of chopped tomatoes
1/2 onion, chopped
1/2 medium winter squash (like carnival or acorn; or a large sweet potato) cubed
1/2 cup vegetable stock
1 tsp olive oil
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
1 cup cooked anasazi beans
1/2 cup frozen (or fresh if in season) corn

1. Saute onion in an oiled skillet until beginning to become translucent. Add cubed squash and stock. Cook until squash fork tender.
2. Pour in the tomatoes and add the spices. Allow to simmer for 10-20 minutes. Toss in the beans and corn. Adjust seasonings; maybe add salt.
3. Serve warm over corn bread :) mmm...

My Munchable Soapbox: One vs. Many

Over the past century, agriculture has shifted from primarily small-scale, multi-crop systems to vast monocultures. While planting row upon row of the same crop allows for efficient planting, tending, and harvesting, it also undermines the long-term sustainability of the agro-ecosystem. So let's talk biological diversity. Even beyond just the variety of crops, or agrobiodiversity, to the whole spectrum within a cropping system. Grist published an article on the topic, as part of its winter-long series devoted to the Lexicon of Sustainability.

Why is biodiversity important for food? Well first off, a multi-faceted farm provides actors to play the various roles needed for a system to function. Imagine you lived in a society with only bankers. Not only would be that be rather dull, but moreover, very little would get done and society would rather rapidly decline. Ok, perhaps not exactly the same, but thousands of acres of corn evokes a similar image. Such a system makes it difficult for multiple types of pollinators to thrive, soils to replenish, and niche pockets of micro-organisms to carry out their important tasks (decomposition, mineral provision, etc.). No boutique shops in this world of dominating conglomerations.

What does this system look like in practice? The image below is from the Lexicon of Sustainability Project's case of Rick Knoll's farm. Rick's "dirty farming" integrates weeds, trees, crops, animals, and soil to create a complex, self-regulatory food chain. One critical point here, is that often reducing the various webs of interactions in an agricultural system ultimately necessitates the use of powerful chemicals and other less-than-desirable control methods. If we take our homogeneous corn field again, of course it will be prone to pests and overpowering weeds! There is nothing left with which to compete. No flower beds to harbour helpful insects; no chickens tromping between beds fertilizing and weeding simultaneously.

Now, I can't claim to be a farmer, and this is much more difficult than my few paragraphs make it out to be. Making a living off of an organic, integrated crop-livestock system with the current slough of incentives, lobbies, and market mechanisms in agriculture is a challenge at best. Still, considering biodiversity and farm diversity should be a forethought rather than an afterthought. If we want to reach long-term sustainability of our food systems, we need to revisit the tenets embedded in this more holistic approach.

Source: Lexicon of Sustainability Project

...Stepping off of my soabox...

My Munchable Soapbox: Nouveaux Riche and Old Money

The apple is a remarkable fruit. It has a long, global history and manifests in a diversity of size, shapes, and flavors. (Also, not that all three of those links are my musings on the magnificence of apples). This is sort of the crux of today's blog title. New varieties of apples are constantly in the works, being crossed and bred to produce something tastier, crunchier, juicier, you name it. At the same time, we are experiencing a resurgence of heirloom varieties of apples. I have to admit to struggling a little - do I give in to the crisp deliciousness of the recently unveiled Honey Crisp or stay loyal to the centuries-old Golden Russet or Black Twig?

Well, I was listening to a podcast the other day, when I learned of the newest star on the apple stage: SweeTango. Oh yes, it sounds like an enticing dance, but sadly it is too late in the year to give the apple a taste. Child of the Honey Crisp and the Zestar, both relatively young apples. What struck me was that the SweeTango is 'managed.' Meaning that there are strict guidelines and contingencies to even get permission to grow the patented apple. That said, I still wouldn't mind trying one...

What do you think about intellectual property rights of food crops? Do you have any preferences between the 'nouveau riche' and the 'old money' of the apple world?

A Cherry by Any Other Name...

“What is this?” a lady asked a market vendor. A raspberry, was the slightly exasperated response the woman received, but not at all what she had hope for. She was interested in the particular variety of raspberry for sale. Perhaps this woman at the Portland Sunday farmers market is indicative of a growing awareness of the diversity within our food system. However, the fact remains that we have been trained to think of foods as apples, oranges, beans, lettuce, garlic…often done without recognizing that there may be tens, hundreds, even thousands of varieties of each.

If I asked you what is your favorite fruit, how would you respond? Would you tell me that you love Sea Breeze strawberries? Or Red Haven peaches? Or Lapin cherries? Or Brown Turkey figs? Well, most people would just say apples or pears, plums or bananas. But the multitude of playful, and sometimes comic or witty, names opens a whole new world of market produce fun. I’ve sold Music garlic and Spartan apples, sautéed some Red Russian kale, and enjoyed a Mortgage Raiser tomato and Rattlesnake beans.

But there is more to agro-biodiversity than fancy names. From an evolutionary perspective, our agrarian ancestors had the right idea. Cultivate crops suited to different climates, available at various times during the year, resistant to certain pests. For example, usually you will see strawberries in June and July, and then they are done. But an ever-bearing variety will actually produce in May, June, August, and September, albeit smaller fruit spread out over the seasons. Ultimately, diversity builds resilience in the agro-ecosystem and tempers what would otherwise be very lean years. It’s our insurance policy; eggs spread out over multiple baskets; a diversified portfolio; you get the picture.

And then there is taste. When we are talking food, let us never forget taste. Fruits demonstrate the beauty of diversity very well, so let’s  examine my love affair with cherries. Sadly, this fruit is not so prevalent on the east coast (and the season ended nearly two months ago), but I had a run-in with these pitted wonders last weekend in Portland. I am sure you know the Bing variety – dark purple, juicy, deep – and you may be familiar with the Rainiers – tie-dyed yellow and pink, with a light summer flavor. But have you heard of Lapins (maybe…)? Or the Staccato? Or Tulare? Each has its own distinct flavor profile, not to mention staggered growing seasons and ideal weather/soil conditions. What I didn’t realize until my east coast move is that those are just the sweet cherries; sour cherries seem to be big around here and have there own extended family tree.

So, here’s a challenge: as fall approaches swear off your typical fuji or gala apples that everyone knows, and seek out their interesting cousins. If you are still basking in end-of-summer fruit bounty, have a blind peach or tomato tasting. Oftentimes farmers will advertise the varieties they grow, but if they don’t, just ask!

To find some interesting varieties of your favorite fruits and veggies, check out Slow Food International’s Ark of Taste and its US catalogue.

Celebrate Diversity!

Forest edge in southern Mexico

While we confront biological diversity (consciously or not) every day, today is the office International Day for Biological Diversity, and this year the theme is forests! Unfortunately, the United States is not a signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and thus you may not have heard too much on the topic.

First, what is biological diversity? According to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), biodiversity is "the variability among living organisms from all sources including terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems, and the ecological complexes of which they are part; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems." I like to think of biodiversity as out planetary insurance policy. Our understanding of the complex biophysical and chemical processes that underlie the natural support system (ie. food, clean water, breathable air, etc.) is so limited that it is essential to preserve as many options as possible for Mother Nature.

This can sound very fluffy, so let me provide an example from agriculture. We recently explored the wonderful world of bananas. Well, I failed to mention that up until the 1950's a single variety, the Gros Michel, comprised the majority of the commercial banana market. When Panama disease spread through plantations, the banana was essentially driven to extinction. The industry was only saved by replacing the susceptible banana with the less desirable Cavendish, a resistant variety. Now, the essentially genetically identical bananas are facing a new strain of the virus, with little research into diversifying the banana options. New York Times ran an article on the dilemma a few years back.

As food and nourishment is such an component to life, agrobiodiversity attracts particularly strong interest from the science and development communities (FAO). This subset of biodiversity is actively managed by farmers, constitutes products for human consumption as well as the systems on which these rely, and is entangled in culture and tradition. Diversity within our agroecological systems is critical for adaptation and long-term viability of agriculture. It provides a base for research into new varieties - drought-tolerant, pest and disease-resistant, higher yielding, etc. - and allows farmers not to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak (IUCN).

Finally, let's talk forest agrobiodiversity. The Platform for Agrobiodiversity Research (PAR) emphasize how critical forest products, including food, to our day-to-day survival. Even beyond smallholder farmers who combine small scale cultivation with utilizing the diversity within a forest - from food (tree fruit, nuts, etc.), to fuel (wood), to medicines - forest ecosystem functioning (largely as a product of maintaining biodiversity...) provides services essential to food cultivation such as water filtration, pollination (see bees), and micro-climate regulation. So if you want something concrete to think about for forest diversity, dwell on your coffee, chocolate, mangos, cashews, bananas, etc. But you can also view the role of forest diversity on a deeper level as being integral to sustaining life on this planet.

Next post I propose to talk more about food and less about agriculture! Stay tuned for PB Cake Pops and Ruby Rhubarb Cake!

Planting for Oil

While it may look like we’re headed off to a tropical beach, or perhaps down Palm Drive (go Stanford!), this is sadly not the case. Meet the oil palm, the source of both palm and palm kernel oil – funny how that works.

Have you eaten an oreo lately? Maybe not, but what about a granola bar? Cereal? Peanut butter? More and more brands of processed food – cookies, crackers, candy bars, margarine – are using palm oil as a saturated fat and preservative. It has replaced hydrogenated soybean oil in many products, which is perhaps better, if not fantastic, for your health. While it contains antioxidants, carotenoids, and no cholesterol, it is still a saturated fat and still found in heavily processed foods.

Palm oil has another little dark secret. It happens to be a major driver of deforestation in Indonesia and Malaysia, spurring on the clear-cutting of large swaths of rainforest and planting of hectares upon hectares of monoculture oil palms. Like rainforest beef before it, palm oil (and the companies that use it) has received a lot of bad press lately. Both Nestle and Unilever underwent brutal beatings by Green Peace ad campaigns

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

Militant environmental groups are not the only ones paying heed to the plight of Indonesian rainforests, though. Big business, such as Cargill, General Mills, and the behemoth – Walmart – are starting to make some noise. They are committing to sourcing their oil with sustainable certifications, the most prominent coming from the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). Best management practices include everything from enhancing soil fertility and biodiversity to supporting local livelihoods.

Unlike other products I’ve discussed, like coffee and cocoa, certified sustainable palm oil (CSPO) is not going to be labeled and readily apparent. Using it is a decision within the supply chain of manufacturers, such as Walmart using only CSPO for its private label by 2015. So what can you as a consumer do? For one, eat less processed foods. And if you just can’t give up those cookies (or that dark chocolate peanut butter, mmm…), then be a discerning customer, do your homework, and find out where the palm oil comes from.

For some, like my peanut butter, you can just go to their website. Search RSPO’s list of members. Or if all else fails, email or call up the company and get the scoop. The more these companies are confronted with consumer demand and concern, the more likely it is we will see some real change

Read the latest on Mongabay.

There is a wealth of info out there on palm oil right now, so if something interests you, leave a comment and I will try to hook you up!