Most scientists who keep up to date on the foods we value and the plants and animals that produce them agree that there’s an urgent need to protect the biodiversity of our foods. Too many species are being lost because of monoculture, because of land clearing, and because non-native species are replacing the native ones.
For more on these non-native species, which sometimes are called “exotics” or “invasive species,” see the forthcoming AboutBiodiversity section on Invasive species. |
But how do we protect all these agricultural plants and animals, some wild and some long domesticated by farmers and ranchers and backyard gardeners, against all the dangers arrayed against them? How do we keep alive a tomato that is especially tasty, but that is being replaced by the faster-growing (but tasteless) commercial tomato that is favored by modern agriculture because it stands up well to the rough treatment it takes in shipping and the supermarket? Or how do we protect the satisfying taste of a hamburger, which has changed over the years as the food industry has dosed its animals with hormones and other non-natural additives?
Also, do we really want to allow the foods of the past to disappear? Do we want to abandon the oldies-but-goodies because they don’t work well with modern commercial farming or manufacturing techniques? Losing a variety of maize, or a wild relative of rice, is very much in the same category as allowing a bird or a species of frog to become extinct.
Don’t we humans have an obligation to help our follow Earth-residents stay alive and healthy? Species eventually go extinct — the dinosaurs did, and the passenger pigeon did, and, let's face it: some day even we humans will — but we don't want to be the ones responsible for hastening their (or our) extinction.
So people protect the diversity of our foods. They do it in several ways. Two of them are briefly explored here. Click on Heritage foods to find out about programs and organizations that save, swap, plant, and harvest old and almost forgotten foods. And click on Alternative agriculture to see what many farmers are doing to protect diversity.
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