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You can’t keep a good story down, whether it is the forgotten heirloom trope, contrivances to raise prices, or research of dubious value.

Not Such a Miracle Wheat

Smithsonian Magazine tells the story of the Italian farmer who, in the early 1990s, discovered a bag of old wheat seeds in his attic and transformed them into a miracle of modern marketing. It’s a good read, but …

The elements of the story are undoubtedly true. Claudio Grossi’s grandfather probably did store the seeds and forgot to mention them. Claudio did learn through trial and error how to grow the crop and how to make good bread from its flour. Maybe it was indeed Joseph and his “seven ears of grain [on] one stalk, rank and good” that convinced Claudio that his grain — which he called grano del miracolo — was indeed an ancient grain of Egypt.

There are many varieties called miracle wheat, all of which have not, per the Smithsonian, “a full seven ears, but rather “small-sized secondary spikes”. Similar barley varieties have the same arrangement. And this kind of ear does produce more grain, because each ear carries about 50% more seeds. However, looking further reveals a lot more confusion.

In the 1840s, an English poet was reported as having germinated 12 seeds from an alabaster jar sealed up 3000 years before. These seeds produced branched ears. Fifteen years later, French botanists grew five seeds from an ancient tomb, and these too were branched. There are reports of an older branched variety from Apulia, also called grano miracolo, but those relate back to the English and French claims, and the great antiquity of those seeds is on the face of it highly unlikely. Most likely the English and French seeds (if, indeed, they are distinct; it isn’t clear) are of a contemporary, probably Egyptian, variety of Triticum turgidum ssp durum. Those seeds gave rise to the variety “introduced to Italy at the start of the 20^th century”.

Perhaps for Claudio Grossi’s grandfather they were a novelty, rather than an antique worth preserving, and that’s why he never thought to mention them.

“Shut up about egg prices”

In the spring of 2025 I noted Cory Doctorow’s Eggflation is excuseflation, which laid out the case that egg company Cal-Maine Foods was doing its darnedest to keep egg prices high.

Even at the time, the evidence was pretty damning. But a new report from Politico — Maybe There Was an Egg Cartel After All — brings in a few more egg producers and lays bare the ways in which they colluded to move markets. Politico also has far more details on the US government’s handling of the case, which seems a little lenient. Eggs are not as concentrated as beef — the top 4 companies hold only 33% of the market, as opposed to beef’s 80% — but that’s quite enough to make collusion more profitable than competition.

Mango Blues

A Mango Expert Is Trying to Create the Perfect Blue Mango Why? “The dark color, it won’t show the imperfections of nature … People want them perfect.”

Seriously? Apparently so. Animals, including people during the harvest, scratch the skins and the stems exude a sticky sap. People won’t buy blemished mangoes and farmers go to great lengths to remove sticky streaks. Even so, grocery stores (in the USA) “reject over 40% of crops due to such blemishes”. Does that mean 40% of mangoes? I suspect not. Maybe the figure is even higher for mangoes. Whatever, is a blue-skinned mango really the answer?

Potted Coffee History

Do we need another potted history of coffee? Sure, why not. And there’s some fun new-to-me stuff in there too. The tension between the legality of the intoxicating nature of the drink and the political anxiety that the freedom to drink it in coffee houses begat, had not been clear to me. Likewise the association between “mocha” and, specifically, chocolate and coffee together. Then there are the details of the dallah and UNESCO’s imprimateur of its ritual use. All good to know.

Food or Guns?

As Brits (and others) are urged to prepare for the disruption of food supplies, the Landworkers’ Alliance explains that while the government worries about war with Russia, “our worst nightmare is, in fact, already upon us”. Climate breakdown, they say, won’t be fixed by spending on weapons and defence. I agree, and I also think that it isn’t a simple dichotomy. The cost of full support for a much more secure food system for the UK is a drop in the ocean compared to the spend planned to create a “war-ready UK”. And no matter what Chancellors may say and do, if they wanted to they could find the money.

Geoff Tansy reminded me that Eisenhower said as much in 1953:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half-million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. . . . This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Take care