Rachel Laudan

For starch for industry, not for food, not now. ‘Development began in the mid-1980s, at the beginning of the revolution in biotech foods. A Swedish farmers’ cooperative, Lyckeby, one of Europe’s biggest starch producers, was searching for potatoes with high starch content to supply the starches it sells for manufacturing paper, textile finishes, glues and [...]

It’s a brown tomato.  It came in a plastic box with half a dozen confreres at my local Wal-Mart in Mexico City.  Inside it’s still brownish.  Tastes fine.  Disconcerting, a bit.  It was new to me. But here’s the back story on the demand for these tomatoes from the Wall Street Journal. (Thanks to Sonia [...]

Last week Onkel Bob posted a long response to my post, Bread first or beer first? A bad question. He made several interesting points but the most important point, to which he kept returning, was “How did agriculture start at all?” or “What prompted widespread fields?” That’s an interesting question.  But in my opinion it [...]