Nathan Rosenberg, on the show recently discussing the modern myths that beset American agricultural policy, outlines some of his concerns about the recent report on US farmer suicides.

Unrolled thread from @rosenblawg – 9 tweets

Are people still blaming farmer suicides in India on genetic engineering, I wonder?

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“Plenty of plants, not much meat and maximum variety.”

The best advice for a good diet I’ve ever heard. It’s a maxim devised by Colin Tudge, long before anything similar you may have heard from more recent writers. Tudge, more than anyone else I know, has consistently championed the idea that meat ought to be seen in a supporting role, rather than as the main attraction, a garnish, if you will.

Tudge has been thinking and writing about agriculture and food systems for a long time, and we’ve been friends for a long time too. In fact, it’s fair to say that knowing Colin has influenced my own thoughts about food and farming quite a bit. As far as Colin is concerned, we’ve been going about farming in completely the wrong way for the past 100 years or so. Instead of asking how can we grow more food, more cheaply, he thinks we should focus on what we need – good, wholesome food that doesn’t destroy the earth – and then ask how we can provide that for everybody.

He’s expanded and built on those ideas in many books since Future Cook (Future Food in the US), which contained that pithy dietary advice and which was published in 1980. And rather than reform or revolution, neither of which will do the job he thinks needs to be done, he advocates for a renaissance in real farming.

Notes

1. The Campaign for Real Farming and The College for Enlightened Agriculture share a website.
2. More details on the Oxford Real Farming Conference.
3. The two books we mentioned are Feeding People is Easy and Good Food for Everyone Forever.

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Ampicillin was introduced to the British market in 1961. By 1962, there were outbreaks of disease caused by strains of Salmonella typhimurium resistant to the antibiotic. A new study shows that the use of penicillin on farms from the 1950s gave the bacteria a head start. A team at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France, looked at samples of S. typhimurium collected from people, livestock, food and feed between 1911 and 1969. From the announcement:

“Our findings suggest that antibiotic residues in farming environments such as soil, waste water, and manure may have a much greater impact on the spread of resistance than previously thought”, says Dr Francois-Xavier Weill, who led the study.

When are we going to see real action on this?

27 November 2017

1. Scandal in the Dutch national herring test. Two things about this please me. First, the defence that “statistical evidence is a red herring”. Something fishy there. Secondly, The Economist never knowingly avoids an opportunity to pun.
2. Native American chefs excoriate “Thanksgiving”. I can empathise.
3. Cynthia D. Bertelson avoids that trap by focussing on the old English contribution to that feast, as an aperitif for a round-up of proper history books on Britain and food history.
4. Which offers a smooth segue into a slightly hard to swallow history of instant mashed potatoes.
5. All about celery; not, as far as I know, a star of any Thanksgiving table, anywhere.
6. I was expecting major insights from A Taxonomy Of Spices Based On Three Million Instacart Orders but I’m afraid the only insight I got was that in some matters I must be an appalling food snob. Also, how on earth can anyone with a smidgen of sense say this: “we don’t mind shelling out the few extra bucks to ensure that the spices haven’t been exposed to irradiation”?

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Durrus is a village at the head of Dunmanus bay, south of the Sheep’s Head peninsula in the southwest of Ireland. Durrus is also the name of an award-winning, semi-soft cheese, while Dunmanus is a harder cheese, aged a lot longer. Both were created by Jeffa Gill and are hand made by Jeffa and her small team up above the village and the bay.

Jeffa is one of the pioneers who turned West Cork into a heaven and a haven for cheese-lovers. One of the special characteristics of Durrus and many West Cork farmhouse cheeses is that they are washed rind cheeses. The young cheese is inoculated with specific bacteria (some cheeses pick their surface moulds up from the atmosphere) and is then frequently washed or moistened with a brine solution, which gives those bacteria a boost and keeps other micro-organisms at bay. The result is what many people call a stinky cheese, although the actual flavour of these cheeses is often mild, sweet and creamy.

The really remarkable thing about West Cork is how an entire food ecosystem has grown up there in the past 50 years or so, each part depending on and encouraging the others. The fact that there are so many outstanding farmhouse cheesemakers is no accident; they all gathered originally and shared their ups and downs, from which each developed their own unique cheeses. They were supported by local shops and restaurants, who created demand not just for fine cheeses but for so many other foods too. Surely someone must have documented it; so where is it?

Notes

1. Durrus Cheese has a website.
2. There’s some cracking stuff on the early history of West Cork cheese on the Milleen’s site
3. And some equally cracking stuff on washed rind cheeses, at microbialfoods and seriouseats.

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