How Cultural Knowledge Sustained Desert Farms in the Ancient Andes
An archaeologist who studies past farming practices in the north coast of Peru argues these offer models for navigating current climate crises. ✽ SEEING THE NORTH COAST of…
Tag: agriculture
Milpa for the Future
As the influx of processed foods threatens traditional diets in rural Mexico, an intergenerational community is forming to keep people healthy. Milpa is an ancestral way of farming…
Responsible AI in Action: Beyond Policy Regimes
Work on Artificial Intelligence writ large has moved past laudatory excitement to one of vast critique. This recent scholarship has demonstrated the various racist and sexist biases embedded…
Water, Politics and Climate in Southwest China
Andrea Pia’s Cutting the Mass Line examines water supply and increasing scarcity induced by the climate crisis in a rural area of Yunnan, Southwest China. Combining a rich…
Thinking with Epistemic Things: Quality and its Consequences in Agri-Commodities Markets
This is a thought experiment on the consequences of technical rationality, the dominant epistemology of practice that tells us that “professional activity consists in instrumental problem solving made…
Cultivating Dragon Fruit’s Political Power in Ecuador
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, an anthropologist explores how the Shuar people are betting on dragon fruit cultivation to reclaim economic autonomy and political sovereignty. This article was originally…
It’s Time to Replace “Prehistory” With “Deep History”
A team of archaeologists working in Southeast Asia is pushing toward a deeper understanding of history that amplifies Indigenous and local perspectives to challenge traditional archaeological timeline…
“Work together, eat bread together”: Stardew Valley and the Dream of the Commons
Farming Fantasies “There will come a day,” proclaims the player character’s grandfather in the popular video game Stardew Valley, “when you feel crushed by the burden of modern…
2024 SAFN Student Research Award Winner!
Majeed Malhas We are pleased to announce that the winner of the 2024 SAFN Student Research Award is Majeed Malhas. Malhas won with a project entitled “Arab Nationalism…
How Colonialism Invented Food Insecurity in West Africa
Archaeological evidence and Oral Histories show people in what is today Ghana lived sustainably for millennia—until European colonial powers and the widespread trade of enslaved people changed everyth…
A Palestinian Family’s History—Told Through Olive Trees
A new book chronicles a Palestinian family’s life and connections to their land over decades under Israeli occupation in the West Bank. Excerpted from My Brother, My Land: A…
Cultivating Modern Farms Using Ancient Lessons
An anthropologist examines what past farmers can teach us about adapting to climate change amid—and sometimes against—powerful political influences. This article was originally published at The Conve…
Review: A Bold Return to Giving a Damn
Harris, Will (2023) A Bold Return to Giving a Damn. One Farm, Six Generations, and the Future of Food. With Amely Greeven. Viking. ISBN 9780593300473. 304 pages. Ellen Messer…
Bunk is not Bunn: A Silly Claim about the Origin of Coffee
In a non-academic website called Atlas Obscura, there is an article with the entertaining title: “Before Drinking Coffee, People Washed Their Hands With It.” The article was written…
Algorithmic Imaginations in Agriculture: Automation?
In 2022, I was conducting my doctoral dissertation research on data-driven, automated digital farming technologies (drones, autosteering, sensors, GIS, smartphones, Big Data) in Turkey. Amidst the glo…
“Blooming Biomes Mean Blooming Profits”: ‘Nature-based’ Industrial Farming and the Politics of the Industrial Animal Microbiome
Industrial trade shows are curious places. Potential customers milling around more than 500,000 square feet of exhibit space; technoscientific exuberance and hype; snappy names and enticing displays; …
Shaila Seshia Galvin discusses her book, Becoming Organic
Interview by Ziya Kaya https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300215014/becoming-organic Ziya Kaya: In your book, Becoming Organic, you take us to various sites of pre- and post-agricultural p…
Unearthing Culinary Pasts—With Help From Llama Poop
A food archaeologist investigates everyday eating and lean times among the ancient Moche of Peru through a remarkable discovery of thousands of llama “beans.” A DAY IN THE…
Podcast on Gulf Almanac Lore
My podcast with Ahmed AlMaazmi and Tamara Fernando is posted online on the New Books Network.
Review: Glyphosate and the Swirl
Vincanne Adams. Glyphosate and the Swirl: An Agroindustrial Chemical on the Move. Duke University Press. 2023. Pp. 174. ISBN 9781478016755. Pablo Lapegna (University of Georgia) Welcome to …
People of the Peppers
Meet Katherine Chiou, an archaeologist who conducts research in Mexico and Peru to search for clues about humanity’s spicy romance with hot chili peppers. The world over people…
What a Cow’s Horn Reveals About Khoisan Medicine
An archaeologist explains what a 500-year-old horn container found in South Africa illuminates about precolonial Khoisan medical and spiritual knowledges. This article was originally published at The…
Why These Hong Kong Urbanites Are Farming
An anthropologist takes readers inside a Hong Kong ecovillage, revealing a small but thriving movement built around food, sustainability, and community. A HONG KONG ECOVILLAGE One January morning,…
Tomaso Ferrando: Beyond Speculation
On May 21, 2022 the cover of The Economist left no space to the imagination: a set of skulls replaced the grains of a wheat straw, and the…