An interesting post from Brent Lineberry explained why he no longer makes his own yoghurt and prompted me to examine my own practice.

I’ve made my own yoghurt since forever, when my Mom bought a strange kit that consisted of a tray cover, like the kind you see removed with a flourish in fancy restaurants, only double-walled aluminium, which covered a set of six hexagonal jars that came together with a hole in the middle for a much smaller jar. You heated the milk, let it cool, inoculated with yoghurt from the previous batch, in the smaller jar, poured it into the big jars and the small jar and put the cover on. Twelve hours later, yoghurt.

A good month, with two brief excursions and a lot of little achievements.

I have never felt as much a part of a close-knit community as I did in university. On the very first day, three of us (out of five) in what you might I suppose call a dorm discovered an instant friendship. By the cancelled 50^th reunion in 2020, one of us was no longer alive to attend. In between, and still now, there was just something very special that started back then.

UN-sanctioned international years of this, that and the other have been with us since 1959 and World Refugee Year. In 2004, we were fed the first direct food year with the international year of rice, and since then we’re had potatoes, quinoa, pulses, fruits and vegetables and millets. Food-adjacent years have included biodiversity, family farming, soils, plant health, and artisanal fisheries and aquaculture. Next year promises camelids, with rangelands and pastoralists due in 2026.

Bad news, Optimists. Latest data from USDA Agricultural Research Service shows a steep drop in agricultural output growth in 2011–2021. That despite an increase in land converted to agriculture.

Hard times are coming, we just can’t be sure about when.