Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
Calvin Trillin goes to a crawfish-eating contest, circa 1972
The New Yorker
“The world record at crawfish eating—the record, at least, according to Breaux Bridge, which is, by resolution of the Louisiana Legislature, the Crawfish Capital of the World—was set by a local man named Andrew Thevenet, who at one Crawfish Festival ate the tails of thirty-three pounds of crawfish in two hours. My doubts about being able to peel that much crawfish in two hours—not to speak of eating it—were increased by some stories I heard about tricks contestants have used in the past. One man was said to have perfected a method of peeling a crawfish with one hand and popping it into his mouth—a process that was described as ‘inhaling crawfish’—while reaching for the next crawfish with his other hand.”
Is rock dust the answer to agriculture’s carbon problem?
FERN and Yale Environment 360
“The hemp field trial is just one of the projects being led by Ben Houlton, dean of Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. For the last two years, he and colleagues at the Working Lands Innovation Center, a research consortium based at the University of California, Davis, have been testing various soil amendments that grab carbon from the air and trap it below ground,” writes Susan Cosier, in FERN’s latest story. “They’ve tested biochar, manure, and rock dust used on the New York land and California farm plots, and so far, the most effective soil treatment is basalt pulverized into dust.”
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The well-fixer’s warning
The Atlantic
“It occurred to him that these same farmers had endured at least five droughts since the mid-1970s and that drought, like the sun, was an eternal condition of California,” writes Mark Arax. “But he also understood that their ability to shrug off nature—no one forgot the last drought faster than the farmer, Steinbeck wrote—was part of their genius. Their collective amnesia had allowed them to forge the most industrialized farm belt in the world … The well fixer understood their hidebound ways. He understood their stubbornness, and maybe even their delusion. Here at continent’s edge, nothing westward but the sea, we were all deluded.”
‘Agribusiness is at war with public health’
The Nation
“To fully grasp why we’re living in an age of pandemics, one must first understand how industrial agriculture and deforestation work in tandem,” writes Eamon Whalen. “When thousands of the same breed of animal are raised in crowded conditions, the lack of biodiversity creates ‘an ecology nigh perfect for the evolution of multiple virulent strains of influenza, [epidemiologist Rob] Wallace wrote. Farms built near dwindling primary forests where zoonotic pathogens reside have inadvertently ‘empowered the pathogens to be their very best selves,’ he told me. ‘You strip out the complexity of forest that had been keeping these pathogens bottled up, and you let them have a nice straight shot to the major cities, which gives them opportunities to multiply themselves.’”
Ancient farmers, brutal feuds
Smithsonian Magazine
“Around 1,000 B.C., some foragers decided to try farming in one of the driest spots on Earth, the Atacama Desert, which lies between the Andes Mountains and Pacific Ocean, in what’s now northern Chile,” writes Bridget Alex. “When farming began, lethal violence surged and remained high for centuries. The desert inhabitants attacked and slayed one another with maces, knives and hunting weapons, probably fighting over scarce water and fertile land.”
Margaritaville and the myth of American leisure
Eater
“Michele Crippa’s palate was renowned in Italy’s gastronomic circles, capable of appreciating the most subtle of flavors,” writes Emma Bubola. Then, “[l]ike so many people who have contracted the coronavirus, Mr. Crippa lost the ability to smell — so intrinsic to tasting food — and when it returned, it came back warped.” After months of retraining, “with the help of sensorial analysis experts … he has emerged in Italy as a symbol of gastronomic resilience — and of hope that the lingering effects of Covid-19 can be surmounted.”