Net News- Sweetness and Power Edition

Thomas Erdbrink of the New York Times continues his coverage of the severe drought in Iran, which has lasted seven years. Very low rainfall and rapidly dwindling groundwater, 70 percent of which has been consumed in the last half-century, threatens agriculture and has transformed the country's urban life.​

Williams College environmental studies fellow Elizabeth Kolbert reports on the steady flooding of south Florida, where climate change is seeping up through gutters and front lawns, in the latest of her ongoing 'Field Notes from a Catastrophe' for the New Yorker.

Cultural anthropologist Sidney Mintz died on December 27th at the age of 93. Read Sarah Hill, Marion Nestle, and an OUP editor on the passing of a giant in the history and anthropology of commodities.

The foods eaten have histories associated with the past of those who eat them; the techniques employed to find, process, prepare, serve, and consume the foods are all culturally variable, with histories of their own. Nor is the food ever simply eaten; its consumption is always conditioned by meaning. These meanings are symbolic, and communicated symbolically; they also have histories. (Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom (Beacon Press, 1996), 7)

A data revolution is coming to farming. An archive for future agricultural historians?

Professor Nancy Langston reflects on the alternative history of land policy in the American West advanced by the anti-government militia that is currently occupying Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon.