Food, like everything else, changes over the years. Once-beloved varieties of foods, from rice to beans, apples to maize, slip away or are abandoned as society moves to new ways of growing and consuming food.

Sometimes it’s monoculture that forces the change. A potato that many people thought delicious might be replaced by one tasting entirely differently, simply because farmers found the replacement easier to work with. Sometimes it’s the food service or distribution industries that force the change. Anyone who was fed homemade hamburgers may have difficulty making the transition to the versions served by MacDonald’s and Burger King.

Sometimes it’s scientific researchers who work for state universities that receive research funds from the food industry. The standard supermarket tomato is a prime example. Many of the tomatoes you can buy in a supermarket today were not bred for their delicious taste and texture, but for the ease with which they can be mechanically harvested and then shipped long distances without spoiling. The University of California, working in collaboration with big-time tomato farmers, was responsible for this.

Not everybody agrees.
Not everybody likes this arrangement. They don’t want to lose the tastes, and they don’t want the world to lose the diversity, and they’re doing something about it. For hundreds of years, farmers in the less-developed world have been saving their best seeds (those that produce healthier plants, those that grow the best-tasting beans or maize or wheat). In doing so, they have been saving plant biodiversity. In the developed world, something similar is happening.

People — some are farmers, some are home gardeners — are saving old-fashioned seeds, which they call “heirloom” or "heritage" varieties, and growing them year after year to keep the tastes and biodiversity alive. Some of these seeds are exceedingly rare, and the diversity they contain survives only through these yearly plantings. Often these people exchange seeds with one another.

Dozens of organizations exist with the mission of saving and exchanging seeds. For example, Seeds of Diversity Canada publishes an annual directory of its members. Their Web site explains:

“Each year at harvest time, we ask our members if they have seeds that they would like to offer to other members. These offers are compiled into a directory which is mailed with the January magazine. Then, when a member wants to request seeds, they write directly to the offering member and enclose a small amount of money to cover packaging and return postage. Otherwise, there is no charge for the seeds.”

The purpose of the Canadian exchange, its organizers write, “is to conserve the gene pool of traditional Canadian plants, and to make sure that those varieties are available to people who can use them.” Members of the exchange grow 675 varieties of tomatoes; 275 varieties of beans; 76 varieties of peppers; 45 varieties of potatoes, and 21 varieties of garlic. (Most people might not even know that so many different versions of our favorite foods existed.) In all, the exchange’s members conserve some 1,500 different kinds of plants, most of them vegetables and garden fruit.

In India, too.
In Bangalore, India, the Institute for Cultural Research and Action has launched a program to encourage farmers to conserve old varieties of seeds that are quickly disappearing from the fields and from the memories of farmers and consumers.

		Seed Savers Exchange publishes an annual catalogue presenting its offerings. You can get one by calling (563) 382-5990 or going to the organization's Web site. These cooking beans are the Tiger's Eye (top) and Charlevoix Dark Red Kidney. Both are used in chili. (Photos courtesy of Seed Savers Exchange).

Perhaps the best-known heritage seed organization in the United States is Seed Savers Exchange, of Decorah, Iowa. SSE has some 8,000 members. Its Web site declares:

“SSE's main focus is on heirloom varieties that gardeners and farmers brought to North America when their families immigrated, and traditional varieties grown by Native Americans, Mennonites and Amish. Since SSE was founded in 1975, our members have distributed an estimated 750,000 samples of endangered seeds not available through catalogs and often on the verge of extinction. SSE has always been the leader of the heirloom seed movement, and the diligent efforts of our members are making rare heirloom varieties available to gardeners everywhere.”

Although people who plant and exchange heirloom varieties of food plants are free to cultivate their seeds in any way they like, it’s a safe bet that most of them stay away from some of the farming practices that have come to mark modern agriculture — practices such as monoculture, doses of pesticides and herbicides, and heavy use of non-organic (that is, synthetic) fertilizers. Some of those who preserve the seed heritage are strict organic growers; they use no methods that aren’t found normally in nature, and they certainly don’t plant seeds that are the result of biotechnology.

Others use synthetic chemicals and techniques in such moderation that their methods are far removed from “modern,” commercial agricultural business. Several years ago these growers joined a movement that has come to be called sustainable, or alternative, agriculture. Click the "Next" link below to learn more about this movement.

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