FERN’s Friday Feed: How to store a whale
Welcome to FERN’s Friday Feed (#FFF), where we share the stories from this week that made us stop and think.
‘You can’t put half a whale in a little home freezer’
High Country News
“For centuries, people in communities along the shores of the Chukchi and Beaufort seas have stored foods such as whale meat and blubber in … ice cellars dug into the perennially frozen ground,” writes Emily Schwing. “But in recent years, the icy walls of these underground food storage lockers have started to deteriorate due to a warming climate. Ice cellars throughout Alaska’s North Slope region are filling with meltwater, and some have collapsed … Stabilizing ice cellars, according to ICAS staff, could help alleviate food insecurity concerns and maintain centuries of traditional and cultural practice. Now, they aim to use a simple and reliable technology to do just that.”
So, what’s in that box of chicken stock?
Eater
“We’ve created a world in which people want to have everything whenever they want it, and capitalism and global infrastructure have found a way to provide it so that it is affordable, convenient, and omnipresent,” writes Noah Galuten. “We want vaguely chicken-y water, sold to us as chicken broth and confirmed to be such thanks to an ingredients list that states it is, in fact, chicken broth. We want a comforting, familiar brand name to tell us it has made us dinner, and that it even makes the ‘healthful’ version with real bones involved somewhere along the way. We can reach onto a shelf and open a box of water flavored by an amalgam of chickens who died any number of years ago, and be comforted by nostalgia for what we think is our grandmother but in all likelihood is just hollow corporate brand loyalty.”
Behold, the food forest
The New York Times
“‘A food forest is what it sounds like — a forest you can eat,’ said Cara Rockwell, a Florida International University professor who studies food forests. It stems from the multilayered, multispecies gardens that have existed for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, in the tropics, she said. Often, they served as kitchen gardens. Women tended to them,” writes Somini Sengupta. “They’ve been around forever, mainly in the tropics, though enterprising gardeners have created food forests in very different habitats across the United States, from vacant city lots in Philadelphia, public parks in Seattle and Asheville, to schoolyards in South Florida. The reason I want to tell you about food forests is that they can be useful in reimagining how we grow food in a warming world.”
Did humans domesticate plants, or did they domesticate us?
Scientific American (video)
“There are few places on Earth where this question is more present than Çatalhöyük, a 9,000-year-old site in Turkey that was one of the places where agriculture was invented. Those who study places like Çatalhöyük see a complex interplay between human actions and the workings of nature and genetics. Ceren Kabukçu, an archaeobotanist who researches ancient plant specimens, explains how a random mutation in wild wheat produced characteristics that pleased early farmers so much that they selected those plants over and over again until the mutated plants became domesticated. But it didn’t end there. The domesticated wheat evolved to such a degree that it could no longer reproduce without the aid of human hands. Much of what we eat today is rooted in this codependency.”
Sin City is a model for … water conservation?
Los Angeles Times
“Despite its reputation for excess, [Las Vegas] has been factoring climate change into its water plans for years, declaring war on thirsty lawns, patrolling the streets for water wasters and preparing for worst-case scenarios on the Colorado River, which supplies 90% of the area’s water,” write Molly Hennessey-Fiske and Ian James. “Las Vegas has emerged as a leader in water conservation, and some of its initiatives have spread to other cities and states that rely on the shrinking river. Its drive to get rid of grass in particular could reshape the look of landscapes in public and private spaces throughout the Southwest.”