The Mexican River Defenders Fighting for the San Pedro
Nature-loving volunteers in the Mexican state of Chihuahua gather weekly on the banks of the San Pedro River to collect trash. But their aims are bigger. ✽ If…
Tag: agriculture
Mihai Varga: Crisis-tested, yet forgotten: Family farms in wartime Ukraine
It was often said, in the course of the transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s and 2000s, that Eastern Europeans are good at surviving. The IMF…
Review: Making Better Coffee
Edward F. Fischer. Making Better Coffee: How Maya Farmers and Third Wave Tastemakers Create Value. University of California Press. Berkeley: 2022. ISBN: 978-0-520-38696-9 David Sutton (Souther…
When Coffee Is Like Angel Cake With Strawberry Jam
An anthropologist delves into the rarefied ritualistic world of specialty coffee, where highly trained brewers and judges compete to determine which beans reign supreme. Excerpted from Making Better…
How Gravestones Shaped as Sheep United the Caucasus
An archaeologist fascinated by a centurieslong memorial practice in Georgia considers how these unique gravestones reflect shared values and traditions—yet are sometimes destroyed in nationalist cultu…
The Paleolithic Age Cooked Up Creative Chefs
An archaeologist explains how new evidence stands to change what we thought about how ice age humans prepared food. This article was originally published at The Conversation and…
You Are What You Grow: Crops, Cultivation, and Caste in India
The allure of the onion Fieldwork can produce odd obsessions. As an anthropologist studying agrarian risk economies, mine was onions. In the central Indian region of Malwa where…
A History of Food Production in Yemen
In October, 2022, I participated in the Food Sovereignty Workshop at Ohio State University and discussed the issue of sustainable agriculture and water resource use to improve the…
Review: Beyond Global Food Supply Chains
Victoria Stead and Melinda Hinkston, eds. Beyond Global Food Supply Chains: Crisis, Disruption, Regeneration. Palgrave. MacMillan. Open Access. (2022) https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/…
Why Indigenous Fire Management Works
Three researchers use a study of the cypress pine in Arnhem Land, Australia, to explain why large-scale, institutional fire management is inferior to sustainable cultural burning. This article…
With So Few Farmers, Why Are Video Games About Farming So Popular?
An archaeologist considers what farming simulators reveal about humanity’s ancient and evolving relationship with agriculture. ✽ “I hate when I have to harvest at night,” my husband complained…
Food Sovereignty vs. Food Aid: Why Smallscale Farming Suffers
Traditional farming in al-Ahjur, Central Highlands (photography by Daniel Martin Varisco) The early major civilizations in the Middle East and Asia with their head start several millennia ago…
Why Do (Some) Humans Love Chili Peppers?
An anthropologist traces the origins and world travels of one of his favorite kinds of plants. ✽ As someone who grew up in the Philippines, I have always…
In Case You Missed It: Cultivating Connections 2022
Jennifer Jo Thompson, University of Georgia (SAFN President) After three years of planning, postponing due to COVID-19, and then planning again, “Cultivating Connections”—the 2022 joint annual mee…
Review: Farms to Incubators
Wu, Amy (2021) Farms to Incubators. Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food is Grown. Fresno, California: Craven Street Books. Ellen Messer (Tufts University) This book, like the docum…
What Is Good, Clean, and Fair? Panel Discussion of the Choices We Make
SAFN member and food and environmental anthropologist Mark Anthony Arceño will be hosting a panel discussion next Wednesday, June 15th, from 12-1pm EST, focusing on food and food…
Seasonal Knowledge and Arab Gulf Almanacs
I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book: Seasonal Knowledge and the Almanac Tradition of the Arab Gulf. Details about the book, including a free…
Yemen Film 1973
This exquisite film was produced in 1973 and filmed in 1972, thus representing Yemen half a century ago. It is now available on Youtube. The filmmakers were Karen…
The State of Agriculture in Late 13th Century Rasulid Yemen: Part 1
By Daniel Martin Varisco [In 2003 I attended a conference in Rome and gave a paper which was eventually published in Convegno Storia e Cultura dello Yemen in…
Plough in Tunisia
I am always intrigued by old photographs of traditional ploughs in the Middle East. The picture above is from a 1925 travel book by Norma Lorimer entitled By…
“This Sweet Potato is Beautiful.” From Ethnoagronomy to Ethnogastronomy in the work of Virginia Nazarea
Lima, 2015. At the Mistura, an annual food festival in Peru wherein people from the desert, the Andes, and the coast bring their produce and artisanal products to…
January in Yemen’s Agricultural Calendar
From the Facebook site of al-Amth?l al-zir?‘iyya f? Tih?ma.
The Food Security Myth: Struggle Toward Food Sovereignty in Benin
Segnide J. Guidimadjegbe Oregon State University I was born and raised in Benin, a West African Country that is used to be called “Dahomey.” Very young, my sibling…
More Persistent Inequality: Farmworkers and Your Food
Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of postings by students in a graduate seminar on food justice at the University of New Orleans. You can read…