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Puglia is massive. I mean that quite literally, not as youthspeak, though that too. Its northernmost point is actually north of my home in Rome, though admittedly not by very much, which is strange when you consider that for most people, Puglia is only the high heel itself. That’s true for me and for several past episodes here.

A new book that explores the whole province, and more particularly its food and ingredients, flashed through my feeds a few weeks ago. After just a quick look at the contents it seemed obvious that my next move ought to be to hop on a train to Polignano a Mare to talk to the author, Flavia Giordano. So that’s exactly what I did. It was a long day, and entirely worthwhile.

Notes

1. Flavia Giordano’s book is Puglia: A cooking journey through a land and its unique ingredients, and the simplest way to get hold of a copy is to join Flavia for a tour or a class, easily booked from her website. Of course, you should also follow her on Instagram.
2. Here is the transcript.
3. The banner image is from an early 16^th century Turkish Book on Navigation and shows the town of Bari and part of the surroundings, from the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Cover artwork, Puglia’s colourful carrots, by me.

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For much of the world, food has never been as abundant or as inexpensive as it is now, but at what cost? The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that the cost of diet-related ill health is somewhere around $7 trillion, which is far more than the “profits” of food and agriculture. Those profits, like the cheaper, more plentiful food they stem from, take no account of the external costs of climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss and, ultimately, human health.

Professor Tim Benton has spent his career working at the interface between agricultural and food politics and environment.

“If we don’t get to grips with these challenges,” he told me “then ultimately the only thing to happen is some big calamity at some point in the future, where the planet bites back and says, I’ve had enough.”

Notes

1. Tim Benton’s paper with Rob Bailey — The paradox of productivity: agricultural productivity promotes food system inefficiency — is a very readable summary.
2. Here is the transcript.
3. This is not the first time the podcast has looked at prices and externalities – search for prices – and it will not be the last.

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This time of year, approximately speaking, is ripe for investigating food and cultures, as in the episode Celebrating Passover and Easter. With Passover just behind and Easter just ahead, I’m happy to resurrect some more ancient posts.

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The top four companies globally control more than 60% of the inputs modern farmers need: machinery, fertilisers, seeds, and pesticides. That kind of concentration, coupled with their size, gives these companies unprecedented power to set prices, often in collusion with their “competitors,” to block real competition, to stifle innovation, and to manipulate governments and policies. And while that may seem a problem of modern times, it’s actually a story that goes back to the beginning of industrial agriculture. Jennifer Clapp, Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo in Ontario undertook a deep investigation of the history and behaviour of these companies for her new book Titans of Industrial Agriculture: how a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sector and why it matters.

Notes

1. Jennifer Clapp’s book Titans of Industrial Agriculture: how a few giant corporations came to dominate the farm sector and why it matters is published by The MIT Press.
2. This recent article by Jennifer Clapp sets out some of her views on how to address global hunger, including ideas on reining in corporate concentration.
3. Here is the transcript.

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For most of the 2000s, farmers in Peru earned a little more than one sol per kilogram of unprocessed quinoa they sold. Starting around 2007, the price began to climb as quinoa exports became a thing, averaging 9 soles per kg in 2014. The following year, the price halved, and it dropped again in 2016. It’s still around 4 soles per kg, so a lot better than it was, and quinoa production is double what it was. Nevertheless, the early promise of a sustained quinoa boom proved to be an illusion.

Emma McDonnell was in Peru for the early years of the boom and for the subsequent bust, a story she recounts in her book The Quinoa Bust.

Notes

1. Emma McDonnell has a website. Her book The Quinoa Bust: The Making and Unmaking of an Andean Miracle Crop is published by California University Press.
2. A previous episode — It is OK to eat quinoa — looked at the impact of the boom in purely economic terms.
3. An issue of the USDA’s Choices magazine looked at several so-called functional foods, including quinoa, asking whether they were a Fad or Path to Prosperity?. Both, maybe.
4. Here is the transcript
5. The banner photo uses a picture of quinoa growing in Ollantaytambo, Peru by Hector Montero. The quinoa close up on the cover is by Flickered!

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