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‘It could feed the world’: amaranth, a health trend 8,000 years old that survived colonization:
Just over 10 years ago, a small group of Indigenous Guatemalan farmers visited Beata Tsosie-Peña’s stucco home in northern New Mexico. In the arid heat, the visitors, mostly Maya Achì women from the forested Guatemalan town of Rabinal, showed Tsosie-Peña how to plant the offering they had brought with them: amaranth seeds.
Back then, Tsosie-Peña had just recently [be]come interested in environmental justice amid frustration at the ecological challenges facing her native Santa Clara Pueblo – an Indigenous North American community just outside the New Mexico town of Española, which is downwind from the nuclear facilities that built the atomic bomb. Tsosie-Peña had begun studying permaculture and other Indigenous agricultural techniques. Today, she coordinates the environmental health and justice program at Tewa Women United, where she maintains a hillside public garden that’s home to the descendants of those first amaranth seeds she was given more than a decade ago.
They are now six-foot-tall perennials with flowering red plumes and chard-like leaves. But during that first visit in 2009, the plants were just pinhead-size seeds. Tsosie-Peña and her guests spent the day planting, winnowing, cooking and eating them – toasting the seeds in a skillet to be served over milk or mixed into honey – and talking about their shared histories: how colonization had separated them from their traditional foods and how they were reclaiming their relationship with the land.
Since the 1970s, amaranth has become a billion-dollar food – and cosmetic – product. Health conscious shoppers embracing ancient grains will find it in growing numbers of grocery stores in the US, or in snack bars across Mexico, and, increasingly, in Europe and the Asia Pacific. As a complete protein with all nine essential amino acids, amaranth is a highly nutritious source of manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, iron and antioxidants that may improve brain function and reduce inflammation.
“This is a plant that could feed the world,” said Tsosie-Peña.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 07 2021, @06:00AM (18 children)
Amaranth is the new quinoa. Get your fad food now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @06:18AM (1 child)
This!
(Score: 2) by hopdevil on Saturday August 07 2021, @07:32AM
Rice tastes better
(Score: 3, Insightful) by istartedi on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:18AM (6 children)
LOL, They're in the same family [wikipedia.org].
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:38AM (5 children)
What's lol about this? House cats and lynx are in the same family too but they're not the same thing.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday August 07 2021, @09:26AM (4 children)
The LOL is that a similar plant would be subject to the same sort of chicanery. Perhaps we'll work through all its edible genera eventually, as if that were the plan all along.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 08 2021, @02:54AM (3 children)
The big problem with these "alternatives to conventional grain" is that they can only feed a very small world with a large percentage of the population engaged in the manual labor of farming, because they don't work well with large-scale mechanized harvesting. Generally the problem is the seeds don't mature all at once, so either some are immature (thus still too much moisture, so they mold in storage), or a large percentage have already fallen to the ground. And those promoting 'em never have any clue of the sheer volume of the world's grain harvests.
If they were a practical alternative, the farmers who presently feed the world would switch over in a heartbeat, because the fad alternatives are always far more profitable than conventional grains.
As it is, if you really want to discard ten thousand years of selective breeding for maximum productivity and eat this stuff instead, it's in the pigweed group, which grows anywhere weeds are found. Help yourself.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @04:56AM (2 children)
There's a corn subsidy in the USA. And there's all kinds of Monsanto trickery to get taxes, zoning, anything to have more of their varieties planted. Amaranth and quinoa ARE practical alternatives, by square meter and by farming effort, to meat but people want flesh.
And - "ten thousand years of selective breeding" - what about "amaranth has been cultivated for 8,000y" is so hard to see? It's not even in TFA, or TFS, it's right in the headline...
Your ignorance is showing as you bloviate. Harvesting amaranth is very, very easy - and as easy to do by hand, and as easy to mechanize, as grapes, if not easier. You could've trivially looked that up before spewing ungrounded opinion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @08:32AM
But then he wouldn't be a member of the Grand Old Terrorist Party!
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @08:59PM
Actual farmer chiming in:
You're right about the viability of farming amaranth and its relatives as a row crop. We can do it, it's just a little change in machinery and practices to account for the biology of the plant. No major problem.
Where you're wrong:
https://vegfaqs.com/quinoa-amino-acid-profile/ [vegfaqs.com]
and
https://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/afcm/quinoa.html [purdue.edu]
combined tell you that even with top-flight seed choices and conditions, you're not likely to get a lot more than 900 protein-days out of quinoa because it takes you two pounds daily just to keep up with the protein requirements of a normal adult (ignoring the increases for heavy labourers, pregnant women and so on). Amaranth (surprise!) isn't all that different from quinoa in amino acid profile.
It also doesn't do well everywhere, and the second link tells us:
High, dry and cool is the rule. Minnesota wasn't a friendly location for it!
Conversely, at a stocking rate of 1 AU/acre, you could look at more like 1200 protein days per acre, without first dumping lots of NPK on the ground (what, you thought they got those yields just organically?) and with a much lower fuel bill (because running those big tractors takes diesel).
Result: no. You're wrong. By acreage and effort, not to mention flexibility of location, amaranth isn't a get-out-of-omnivory-free card for the world any more than soy/oat combinations are, besides all the problems with crop rotation, fallow periods and the rest of it.
Or was there something else in your plan that you hadn't mentioned?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday August 07 2021, @02:13PM (1 child)
In Vachel Lindsay's 1921 novel The Golden Book of Springfield [mcgrewbooks.com], Lindsay's view of what Illinois would look like in its bicentennial (he had hoped to publish in 1918), there are Amaranth apples, presumably some kind of hybrid.
Rather than science fiction, the story is a silly fantasy, with steam locomotives in 2018, but no electronics.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Saturday August 07 2021, @03:26PM
Are the nuclear reactors and donut makers powered by steam too? :)
I will not joke about Springfield.
I will not joke about Springfield.
I will not joke about Springfield.
I will not joke about Springfield.
I will not joke about Springfield.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Redundant) by FatPhil on Saturday August 07 2021, @03:42PM
I propose ay-may-rahnth? (which some might render as "eimeiraanth", phonetics is hard in ASCII)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday August 07 2021, @03:49PM (5 children)
Or, alternately: Commodities speculators are holding way more amaranth than they wanted, and are now trying to pump-and-dump it away for a profit.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Saturday August 07 2021, @07:17PM
Like Homer's pumpkin investment [youtube.com]?
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @10:56PM (2 children)
Nothing ever changes, and people don't really want to learn from past.
Superhyped superfoods / food fads == super sales for the few that are creating the hype!
Just a few food trends from the past few decades that made many corporations lots of money are:
oatbran
kale
goji berries
apple cider vinegar
chia seeds
acai berries
cocoa
pomegranate
green tea
turmeric
quinoa
avocado
coconut water
juicing
None of these are bad, but don't kid yourself about why they are household names today. What started their popularity is some corporation paid "independent" labs lots of money to study and thus conclude that each of these is the healthiest substance on the planet. Then push, push, and push the hype with seemingly objective "news" reports from tv, magazines, websites, and other media contained under the same corporate umbrella. If this "pigweed" fad takes off the only thing that will change is the elite rich will get richer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09 2021, @04:06AM (1 child)
How could you forget oat bran? That was the granddaddy of the mainstream corporate $$ hype. Before that, unsubstantiated superfood claims were the realm of the granola-heads. Then the Dole/Hatch Dietary and Supplement Act in the 90s essentially removed all barriers to actually needing to show efficacy and/or safety of "supplements", well, that's got us to where we are today. (TOTALLY coincidental that Hatch's son makes millions in the supplement industry)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday August 09 2021, @07:33PM
Check out the Canadian government's food recommendations. [canada.ca] Recently they revised them based on actual dietary science (yes there is some, but it's hard to identify from all the chaff that's blowing around the infosphere) instead of using them to promote the farming industry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09 2021, @04:12AM
Ah, pump-and-dump? So we should get ready for "Uncle Elon's Steel Cut Old Timey Amaranth breakfast cereal", or maybe "Amaranth, the breakfast of SpaceX!"? You can buy it with bitcoin! Or not! Depends upon the week!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday August 07 2021, @06:12AM (14 children)
Just a couple years ago, saw this plant growing profusely in the Roman Forum, in, you know, Rome.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 07 2021, @07:50AM (12 children)
I've seen potatoes in Ireland and they come from the new world too. What's your point?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:29AM (3 children)
What I picked from that tidbit: not irrigated, poor soil, urban environ and still growing enough to be noticed.
What is your objection?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @07:04PM (1 child)
It grows well solely on natural rainfall, on the central coast of California (avg. yearly precipitation 23.12in / 587mm), even in these drought years, . Been growing it (dry farmed) in my garden for years.
But, it is a pain in the arse to winnow the seeds! I winnow in the garden, as it saves both waste, and the step of having to plant the new crop, as so many of the lightweight seeds are accidentally lost when winnowing. Just sweep the chaff+seeds into rows when done.
Also, it must be protected until the sprouts are a couple inches tall, or birds will destroy the entire crop to get to those tiny tasty seeds (including the sprouted ones). I have some hardware cloth that I prop over the rows. But, I've never had any problem with bugs or slugs eating the plants, once established. And, they are quite stunning in appearance (esp. the red ones, but the plainer looking white seems to mature sooner).
As to being a new trendy food, I don't think it will happen, as it is difficult to cook them without them turning into a solid sticky clump. And, they contain too much oil to process into flour-- even with steel cutters, it plugs up the cutters, and you get oily flakes instead of flour; it would ruin a stone mill. You can also harvest the young leaves as greens.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @09:52PM
I had a couple volunteers growing (have both volunteer amaranth and volunteer chia growing around the property now even though either successfully grew in pots. My dad, being a dumbass threw my pots out the following year while I was patiently seeing if they'd sprout. Lo and behold they did... everywhere they'd been tossed out or where birds/rodents has redeposited them... we even have had peanuts growing in the storm gutters a few times!
Point being: This year is so dry that even hardy plants like Amaranth, and certain less hardy desert plants are dying back/out from the extreme drought and heat. If it keeps up like this, within another 5-10 years at most the Central Valley of California will be uninhabitable. There simply aren't the water supplies for it to survive without cutting off SF/LA, at least half of the agriculture, and supplementing the remaining reservoirs if they get refilled in the winter (big if the past few years) with desalinated water in extremely large quantities.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @07:54PM
Umm... pretty sure the "objection" is the title of this thread, i.e., "New World?" Which somehow seems to imply that something that originated in the Americas would be odd or something growing in Rome.
Except, as GP said, potatoes grow in Ireland. And tomatoes grow in Italy too, etc.... and er... yeah, that's why the title of the post and the title of this thread makes little sense.
(Score: 2, Informative) by aristarchus on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:58AM (7 children)
Amaranth did not come from the New World. Ancient Romans ate it, in their Roman Meal Bread you can buy at your local Super.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @10:12AM (2 children)
Apk destroyed you losers especially Azuma Dyke Hazuki https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=37033&page=1&cid=985463#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] & https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?cid=1029695&sid=38763 [soylentnews.org] + your WORTHLESS CRT shitposting. You KIKES censor his posts because you KNOW he's accomplished far more than you soyboy shitweasels and trannies ever will. The DYKE can't get into Canada because they don't want losers on welfare who won't contribute. You censor when Apk tells the truth because you're afraid & you know it. Your fakeNAME ass can't hold a candle to Apk's works. Stop pretending to be an ancient philosopher you "ne'er-do-well" who impersonates Apk & posts RACIST spam. You bully Apk because you know you can't do better than him & you wish you were Apk.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @05:03PM
Ruh roh, Alternative Penis Keks is back and super angry at the spam mod updates. Fuck you incel loser, respectfully of course!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @04:39AM
You're just angry because it's fucking epic to be a dick girl and you know it.
JOIN US
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @12:46AM (3 children)
https://www.thoughtco.com/amaranth-origin-169487 [thoughtco.com]
Would you like to try again, oh ignorant Greek? Or, would you prefer to remain ignorant? Or, maybe you'll insist that the Romans brought amaranth to the new world even before there was a Rome? Far more believable that native Americans brought amaranth to the barbarians who were working so hard to establish that barbarian outpost that was later named Rome.
And, let's not even start on the barbarians in Greece.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday August 08 2021, @12:59AM
Reading comprehension! It is good for you! I never even suggested that amaranth was introduced to the New Word from the Old, I was just rejecting the implication that it was introduced to the Old World from the New. Your own citation says some species are endemic to Europe and Asia and Africa.
Who is the ignorant one, now?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @05:07AM
...and you're trying to say that no vareity originated in Europe?!
Oookay.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday August 09 2021, @07:38PM
How complete is it as a protein source?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @10:04AM
I fucked your mother a couple of years ago. I fucked your mother last night, too.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @06:32AM (10 children)
It could feed your world.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:29AM (2 children)
Only if you have enough water for it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: -1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @12:36PM (1 child)
there are oceans of water out there
water is not the problem
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @04:34AM
Another advantage of ocean water: it's got lectro-lights. It's got what plants crave.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 07 2021, @11:49AM (5 children)
Main difference here is the complete suite of amino acids. Eat only rice for an extended period and you have serious health problems. A varied diet is best, but amaranth alone can supply what you need for years on end.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 4, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:28PM (1 child)
Well, they say it's a complete protein. There are also lots of essential fatty acids and vitamins. It may also be missing a few minerals, though that could easily depend on where it was grown.
That said, the main problem with it is that the individual seeds are so small and hard. It really needs to be ground into a flour, but it takes different milling machinery. But it's not bad at all as a taste. (Neither is quinoa. And quinoa is a better hot cereal.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 07 2021, @02:48PM
The other thing is: if you're growing your own the foliage is also edible. So, you've got a perennial plant that provides salad and broad spectrum nutrition grains which are admittedly more trouble than corn or rice to process, but probably not much more trouble than wheat, particularly since you don't have to plow and reseed it all the time.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @03:35PM (1 child)
So some eat rice and beans. Amazing right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @02:57AM
I prefer beans & rice, but you can do it your way too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @04:48PM
Potatoes can provide the complete suite of amino acids. Potato is a super food if you need 3000-5000 kcal a day ;).
Potato: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2770/2 [self.com]
Sweet potato: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2667/2 [self.com]
Amaranth grain: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10640/2 [self.com]
Quinoa: https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/cereal-grains-and-pasta/10352/2 [self.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 08 2021, @03:56AM
Give me variety. Yeah, rice can keep body and soul together all on it's own, for quite a long while. But the spirit may depart on such a diet. Ditto for amaranth or any other miracle crop. When I'm shopping, I don't look for one food to fill my belly with for the next week. I want some rice, I want some taters, I want some wheat products, I want some corn, a bit of cabbage, some beans, etc etc.
I don't care how miraculous the miracle food might be, I don't want a steady diet of the stuff. Bee products are near miracle foods, but I think I might get sick on a steady diet of honey and pollen.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @10:22AM (3 children)
Forget the marketing fluff. Amaranth is pigweed. Its seeds are used as birdfeed. What we have here is another example of WEF-types trying to get humans to eat things like insects that God intended for the animals.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:44PM
Not flamebait: https://www.phillyorchards.org/2018/04/17/amaranth-super-feed-super-weed/ [phillyorchards.org]
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday August 07 2021, @11:25PM (1 child)
Yes, as God intended
Gensis 1:29
By not partaking of all the foods of the Earth you are denying God's will.
There are over 300,000 edible plants on Earth. Humanity uses only about 30,000 of them for food. We need to diversify our food sources so we don't get into a mess when one of the mono cultures we currently rely on like wheat, corn, and rice gets nearly wiped out by some mold or other pathogen
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @12:00AM
Waiting for the miniature bananas that we ate in Hawaii to make it to the 48 states.
We tried to take some with us for a snack, but the agricultural inspection at the airport stopped us.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Opportunist on Saturday August 07 2021, @10:30AM (10 children)
Look, a new food trend. What is it this time, another form of bird seed, some insects, plankton? What should we eat this time to save the world or "live healthy", because someone some thousand years ago did?
Did it ever occur to any of those food prophets that these people ate that stuff because they had nothing else? And how that stuff was allegedly so incredibly healthy but the people still died at 40-50 on average?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 07 2021, @11:52AM (4 children)
I like the fact that it's perennial, doesn't require discarding a layer of topsoil every season.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america [theguardian.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @04:39AM
The amaranth I grow is an annual (original seed was "organic amaranth" from a bulk bin at the local food co-op). In my climate, anyway.
Here (central coast of California), it germinates with the winter rains, and continues to grow through spring until the most vigorous plants have achieved 5-7' in height with a couple feet of that height being seed head, and most of the plants are drying out by mid summer (but the red [and sometimes a few of the white], keep going for another month or two). I usually wait until the plants begin to desiccate on their own before harvesting, both to give them as much time as possible to grow, and also because I find it easier to thresh. By this point, a small number of the plants are falling over onto the ground. Even if I just left the plants alone, all of them would be dead before the next winter rains.
Maybe it is different in places where precipitation falls for more than just a couple months of the year? But, I guess second year growth would be new shoots from the roots, and last years grown would be lying on the ground? I have a hard time imagining this plant as a perennial. It would be like perennial corn.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @05:16PM (2 children)
I am unaware of any farmer, anywhere, that engages in "discarding a layer of topsoil every season", unless you count people who are growing lawn turf (and even they don't really do that).
Also, that article depends on discredited garbage. Topsoil can be regenerated very quickly if you don't have your thumb rooted in your colon. If you like his work, check out how Joel Salatin does it. If not, there are other methods. The article isn't entirely wrong (but also not entirely right) about low-till farming, but as a general rule if you're looking for agricultural knowledge, stay the hell away from the Graun. They don't know anything except what they would like you to believe that they know.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 09 2021, @01:05AM (1 child)
Intentionally discarding soil? No. Losing more soil to wind and water erosion than they regenerate? Absolutely industrial scale farming is doing this because it generates higher short term returns. Particularly on leased land and other common situations where long term returns on the scale of decades are irrelevant to the decision makers.
The dust bowl was less than 100 years ago. We have improved since then, dramatically, but we're still eroding more fertile soil than we are creating.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09 2021, @09:34PM
Again, it comes down to what you're talking about.
The no till/low till guys aren't eroding much (and generally incorporate plenty of vegetable matter into their soil) so that they tend to retain or increase their soil levels. Their big problem is that their pest and weed control is brought to you by 3M and Monsanto, so they're bad for their soil biota. If that's what you mean, then you're not wrong, except that that's not erosion at work.
The green manure/active tillage/organic guys steer clear of the chemical costs (and hazards) but will do everything from tilling in green manures with carefully chosen schedules to frustrate weeds, to pasture cropping with push-pull pest control strategies to manage the problem critters.
It sounds as if you're thinking of Uncle Bob's leased hayfield concern, where it's a simple scratch-seed-supplement-sweep cycle. Even these days that's less hard on the land than you think although I agree that it's not ideal.
The reality is that your concerns were hot stuff in the '80s and '90s, but a combination of new research and new practices pretty much obsoleted those in the following decades so by now any farmer who's losing topsoil is a laughing-stock.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:09PM (1 child)
And how does that differ from the folks that ate wheat and rye?
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Sunday August 08 2021, @01:57PM
Not at all. That's the point.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:15PM
Where is the "-1 Fucking Retarted" button?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DaTrueDave on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:44PM (1 child)
Do you like lobster?
A hundred years ago, people in the US thought they were disgusting creatures like cockroaches of the sea. They were used to feed prison inmates, and they actually passed rules/laws to limit the amount of lobster that could be fed to inmates because it was thought to be cruel to feed it to them. Now, most of the world has embraced lobster as a delicious food worth paying a premium price.
I'm not convinced that we won't "rediscover" other foods that also improve our normal diet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday August 07 2021, @02:51PM
When my mother was a child (1950s) lobster was what you ate when you went fishing all day and didn't get anything good. They were all over the bottom in South Florida, you could just get one tangled in your fishing line and pull it up - a lot like salmon fishing during a run in Alaska where you just drag a hook through the salmon rich waters and snag the fish.
Today, there's a strict season, size limits, and they're kinda hard to find - outside the park where there's a year-round harvest ban. The premium price is no doubt driven by the rarity - much like Japanese and their Tuna.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @12:15PM
She looks about 25 to me
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @12:47PM
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I HATE ALL NIGGERS! SEND THE NIGGERS BACK TO AFRICA!
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I WANT TO LYNCH NIGGERS! LYNCH ALL NIGGERS!
FUCK YOU AND YOUR RACIST CRITICAL RACE THEORY! ALL NIGGERS AND DEMOCRATS SHOULD BE LYNCHED!
NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS
I HATE ALL NIGGERS! SEND THE NIGGERS BACK TO AFRICA!
NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS NIGGERS
My username is Runaway1956 and I approve this message.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @01:15PM
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @04:44PM (10 children)
About one measly ton per hectare: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amaranth#Seed [wikipedia.org]
IOW, a waste of space.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @05:47PM (3 children)
Monsanto will fix that little problem with GM, as soon as the price comes up...(irony)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 07 2021, @08:05PM (2 children)
In case "global warming" is not a global cooling in the real reality, feeding all the world several times over is rather trivial task even without any GMO.
Oil palms for fats (4 t/ha/year), sago palms for carbs (5 t/ha/year uncultivated, up to 30 t/ha/year in a proper plantation), pigs fed by palm oilcake and sago for protein (1 t per 3 t feed). Alternately, sago grubs for protein. ;) https://www.mysabah.com/wordpress/sago-worm-butod/ [mysabah.com]
Problem is not the shortage of foodstuffs, for some decades already it isn't. Problem is the parasites-in-chief hampering production and distribution in the localities they control. Because they and their friends want Moar Money, and starving commoners never mattered in all the history and now matter even less.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 08 2021, @03:10AM (1 child)
The starving commoners tend to be those under the control of a particular form of misgovernment, especially during its first decades of control. Here is a Handy Chart showing famine deaths over the past century. Can you pick out the trends? Do you notice which continent, home to the 3rd (and 10th) most populous country in the world, is conspicuously absent??
http://doomgold.com/images/faminedeaths.png [doomgold.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 09 2021, @04:32PM
Four out of seven continents are missing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @12:47AM
Way to take the wind out of the article's sails, dude.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 08 2021, @03:14AM
Here's an interesting chart. If all we care about is production per acre, we should all be eating sugar cane. Conversely, if all we care about is profit, we should all be growing pot.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/the-worlds-most-valuable-cash-crop/ [visualcapitalist.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 08 2021, @03:16AM
And more interesting charts, via which you can compare this yield to conventional crops:
https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields [ourworldindata.org]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @05:16AM (2 children)
...a tonne per hectare, and double the protein/wt of wheat. So better than wheat grown without fertilizer, and about half as much protein/hectare as the USA and Canada's heavily fertilized wheat. Which means if it doesn't need as much pest control or water, is better for soil, produces more roughage, etc (all of which have been reported, btw). then it could very easily be a better crop, at a tonne per hectare.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday August 08 2021, @07:35PM (1 child)
Bingo :) And the US midwest is going to seriously have to change what it thinks of as wholesale crops. Wheat and corn are intensive, fertilizer-heavy monocultures, and the way we grow them is awful for the soil.
Were I in charge, I would start by diversifying our crop base to include more drought-tolerant plants, then putting a lot more land under cultivation and doing it less intensively. We're never going to be able to handle a proper milpa rotation, but if we can fallow half the land at a time with clover or legumes and cultivate much more marginal land at lower intensity with gentler drought-resistant crops like amaranth, teff, fonio, and sorghum, we'll be in a much better position.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @11:25PM
You can say that again about milpa rotations - 80% of the time any given milpa is fallow.
But that aside, what do you mean by "lower intensity" and "gentler" crops? Lower nitrogen demands, and pasture cropping? You realise that that reduction in yield, reduction in active time and doing so on marginal land would utterly crater the USA's agricultural productivity, right?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @07:33AM
It makes good bread. Rises well and has good texture. Fad or not, it's worth trying.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @10:08PM (1 child)
Not today, Wokelent News.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 08 2021, @10:42PM
Not gonna argue it is a pretty dumb phrase, but what a low bar you have for your ideological purity!