21 September 2015

The last watermelon of summer

1. Stop and think for a minute: how do they make seedless watermelons? All you need to know, and more besides.
2. A report from the fourth Beeronomics conference. In other news, there are enough “economists and other scientists who work on the economics of beer” to merit a conference series.
3. I’d be really interested to know what a decent ag economist would make of this chart from the USDA, showing that fewer and fewer beef sales are transparently priced.
4. A long and complex discursion that springboards from “the first prong in the anti-hipster food backlash”. I suspect that there’s a lot less to this than meets the eye.
5. It’s an ill wind … the Russian ban on decadent Western foods is proving a godsend to local cheese producers.
6. As ever, some shameless self-promotion. This discovery of oriental fruit flies in Florida makes it worth linking to the episode These aren’t the pests you are looking for.
7. And finally, a tail piece: the true history of culatello.