NOV 18

21: NOV 18

Assigned Reading

• Barber, Dan. Chapter 30: "Seed" from The 3rd Plate (382-409) (21)
• Barber, Dan. Chapter 12: "Land" from The 3rd Plate (158-173) (15)
• The big idea from the Land Institute: The Land Institute, big idea in 3 minute video

Food Media Search and Report Assignment

• The assignment gives you the opportunity to find "food media" that might interest you, and to report your findings to the class.
• Food media includes food tv shows, culinary food blogs and sites, food interest blogs and sites. Youtube, of course, hosts video channels from foodies. See some of the examples from Food News! or contact me to help focus your search. For this assignment, let's focus on social media that is in current and ongoing production. Not, for example, a favorite food movie or recipe site. Ideally, you might use this assignment to discover new sites that you would want to return to.
• Examples: Katie Workman, Rich Roll, Sylvia Fontaine. On youtube, I follow some Italian chefs: Max Mariola, IlBocca TV, CookAround TV. Lots more, but you should follow your interests, not mine. In the food and social justice category sites like Civil Eats is interesting. You might search for others if you are not totally focused on gastronomy. In the traditional podcast category, an example would be gastropod.com
• Assignment: Identify some of your current food media and do some searches based on your interest to find news sources of information, gastronomic or dietary or otherwise that appeal to you at this point in thinking about food.
• Reporting and due date: Please report at least three sources to share with the class. Fill out this form, once for each source. For each source, you will be asked to identify the source, provide a link if possible, and write 2-3 sentence about what you found interesting or appealing in this media. Please complete this assignment by November 25th, 2020, 11:59pm

Barber, Dan. Chapter 30: "Seed" (pp. 382-409)

• Introductory story of the tomato fungus. fungus worse because spread from trucks, but also highlighting varietal system. Mountain Magics resist blight fungus and still taste good. We meet the Cornell breeders of this variety. Theme of the chapter: how does the work of plant breeders affect the food system, especially flavor and yield. Story of Flvr Savr Calgene's gmo industrial tomato. discontinued.

• Background on Land grant breeeding programs. 1862, with USDA, experiment station, extension service added in 1914. Can have negative effects from success. Breeding programs raised yields, but also lowered prices. 388: description of the work of the breeder. Really agriculture's artists.

• Terroir for wheat? Aragon 03, kept alive in a corner of Spain, in high demand.

• Palouse Heritage -- take a look at the landrace/heirloom food system for cereal terroir in the Northwest.

• Steve Jones, formerly of WSU, now Washington State Research and Extention Center, Mt Vernon (and Bread Lab) background story - how land grant seed banks work, fateful meeting with Monsanto (p. 395), 1880 Bayh-dole Act. by 1990s majority funding from private industry.

• • Specialty wheat in Skagit Valley. (So, if wheat were a fresh crop, we would also be supporting crop rotation over syn fertilizers.)

• Nice narrative moment with the farmers and Jones. Interesting point about how the flavor yield trade off occurs more in plant that have been selected for size and water. Harder to ramp up flavor with all that water. Also, older wheat variety had higher nutrition. Claim of 50% more calcium, iron, and zinc.

• Digress on Fall 2018 Florence "Ancient Grains Seminar" (Sharepoint)

• Jones wants to move beyond heirloom varieties. Still ways to improve and diversify strains.

• Steve Jones links: The Bread lab, New York mag article, NYT article, "Bread is Broken".

• Related initiative: The Land Institute, big idea in 3 minute video

Barber, Ch 12, "Land" from The 3rd Plate

• Two stories of "terroir" -- gastronomy & ethics

• Eduardo and his geese -- How does Eduardo come across to you?

• In earlier segment, Eduardo is touting the fact that his foie gras does not require force feeding the geese.
• Is the slaughter humane in your opinion?
• Connection between humane slaughter and taste -- pig story 160

• Monesterio and jamon -- [[1]]

• Jamon iberico de bellota (acorn)-- espression of the land. connection with Spanish identity.
• food religion point: 163 eating pork during the islamic occupation showed you were christian.
• the "dehesa" is the locale for the terrior of jamon iberico. enclosure for pasture of sheep built after the reconquista. grass and oaks protected by law. note relationship between the pigs eating pattern in this environment and the arrival of the acorns.
• note the physical limits of the terroir for jamon. note only geographic, but 4 acres/pig. Can't scale this up.

• These gastronomic stories would certainly count as "extravagant" for Fairlie. Note also that they exemplify terrior. and even moral terrior. Cf to the tonnara in Med.

• Remaining pages of the chapter point out the other rich products of the dehesa. The land is very productive. Even the oak trees provide valuable cork. So there is a kind of intensive agriculture here, but it is very specific to what the land and history could create.