You Are What You Eat

The invention and global spread of agriculture is one of the most profound events in the history of the earth.  It  dramatically altered the distribution and abundance of plants and animals as well as the fundamental bio-geochemical cycles that regulate the planet.  There is now evidence that it also changed the genetic makeup of humans.  Check out this NYT article that describes a recently published study that has for the first time linked human genomic changes (i.e. evolution) with agriculture: http://nyti.ms/1jgdzZC
The actual scientific paper is here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature16152.html

The Least Deadliest Catch

Almost all the food that we consume is the product of domestication, cultivation, and husbandry.  The last great exception to this is seafood, much of which is still harvested directly from oceans, lakes and streams just like our hunter gatherer ancestors did.  Well, actually not very much like they did at all.  We now catch ocean and freshwater species on a scale and intensity that threatens  not only of the existence of the species we catch, but also the ecosystems of which they are part. One potential solution is to make our use of marine resources more like terrestrial food production, i.e. farming.  Of course, whether farming can help solve solutions or create new ones depends on the details of design and implementation. 

Check out this blog post by Liz Camuti of the American Society of Landscape Architects that describes the work of Greenwave: http://dirt.asla.org/2015/11/03/ocean-farm-wins-2015-buckminster-fuller-challenge/

They recently won the Buckminster Fuller Institute Challenge.  Greenwave’s winning project was the “world’s first multi-species 3-D ocean farm". Do you think that this setup is a problem solver?

Down the old mill road

Perhaps no other crop exemplifies the commodification, industrialization,and globalization of agriculture more than wheat.  But the seeming growing desire to return to a more regional and diversified food system is even beginning to show up in this poster child commodity.  Check out this recent story from the NYT:

http://nyti.ms/1GM2AlL

It profiles the work of Dr. Stephen Jones, director of the Bread Lab, at the Washington State University campus in Mount Vernon, Wash.  It also provides a brief but fascinating history of wheat growing, milling, and bread making.

A prickly pale gray lawn

Lush green lawns are arguably as much a part of the iconic Southern California landscape as palm trees and swimming pools.  As the state suffers under a historic drought, the appeal of lawns may be waning.  Check out this article from the New York Times: http://nyti.ms/1LQRpF8

Crop Insurance

A part of the world's crop genetic diversity is stored in a network of collections.  We have one right here in Corvallis: a branch of the National Clonal Germplasm Repository.  http://www.ars.usda.gov/main/site_main.htm?modecode=20-72-15-00

The focus of the Corvallis branch (from their website):

This unit was established to collect, maintain, distribute, evaluate, and document germplasm of hazelnut, strawberry, hop, mint, pear, currant, gooseberry, blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, cranberry, and specialty temperate fruit and nut crops and their wild relatives.

Similar repositories exist around the world focusing on different crops.  They act very much like lending libraries.  They store the genetic diversity of crops partly as an archive, but also to make that diversity more accessible to researchers and plant breeders.

One important part of this network is the so called doomsday seed vault that is built into a mountain in Norway's high arctic.  The role of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to hold backup copies from the other germplasm repositories around the world in case something horrible happens to one of the nodes of the germplasm network.  The frigid and dry arctic location was chosen to make it less susceptible to day to day mishaps like power cuts.  Now, just ten years after the seed bank was established, they have had a request for a withdrawal.  The Syrian civil war has damaged the seed bank housed in Aleppo, and put the collection there in serious jeopardy.  The seed bank is relocating to Beirut, Lebanon and they want to restock the new location with seeds from the Svalbard vault.  Check out this Reuters story here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/09/21/us-mideast-crisis-seeds-idUSKCN0RL1KA20150921

Diversify Your Diet

 
The world diet is increasingly dependent on a handful of staple crops such as wheat, rice and maize. Check out this recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/11/4001.abstract Just like investing all of your life savings in the stock of a single company, a homogeneous food portfolio has a number of risks. Can you think of reasons for why our global food supply is not very diverse? However, things are not just all rice and potatoes. Check out this BBC story about a new crop being developed as an alternative source for the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish oils. http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34464582

The dry economy

The severe drought in CA has significantly influenced its economy. There have been clear and profound negative impacts such as lost crops and the financial costs of forest fires. But the drought has also created some economic opportunities and spurred innovation. This series produced by the BBC radio program Global Business takes a look http://bbc.in/1K9jVA1. It is a two part series; you can navigate to the second part “A Tale of Two Farms” us the panel on the left side.