Variety is the Spice of Life

You won't believe it to look outside but it IS spring, are looking forward to the coming growing season and all the delicious FRESH morsels that will be coming out of our rich New England soil this summer - particularly the wide range of choices that will soon be on offer from adventurous local farmers.   When you are connected with your food and your farmers, as we are, and as our customers are, you appreciate what goes in to growing and harvesting, you appreciate that too little rain and the legumes won't grow, too much rain and the corn won't grow, too warm a fall and the apples won't crisp, too cold and the butternut could be ruined. 

Aren't we lucky then that years and years of farming and selectively collecting seeds has produced some hardy varieties of some of our staples?  I would say so, unfortunately, we have been so selective and grown so few varieties of some our staples over hundreds of acres that the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that 75% of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops has been lost!  One example is bananas: we generally only see one type of banana in our stores, although there are over 300 different varieties. 

So what, you may say, the world is producing enough food, and we don't miss all those tomatoes that were grown in the 1800's, or all those thousands of varieties of potatoes either!  Maybe not, but think on this.  We currently have over 92 million acres under corn crop in the U.S. alone - if 75% of the genetic diversity of those 92 million acres has been lost, imagine what would happen if a new virus or bacteria attacked the remaining 25% - what do you think would happen?  I can tell you what would happen, because back in the 1840's that is exactly what happened to the potatoes.  Only few varieties were grown over hundreds of thousands of acres, blight ravaged the crop for three years in a row causing one of the worst famines in the history of humanity.  The population of Ireland shrunk by half according to some estimates, as people either starved or left their home country in search of food.

"Never put all your eggs in one basket" our grandmothers used to say, and isn't that exactly what we are doing?  And it's not only with our food crops, grass diversity is also being lost as we aim to have beautiful lawns, flora diversity is being sacrificed as we tear native plants out of our gardens in favor of hydrangeas, roses and daisies.  I am not blameless, I confess, but I wonder how many plant species and varieties have gone extinct in the last 50 years?  I think we would be alarmed if we had statistics to consider.  Maybe we should just consider a better way to manage our food system, it's diversity and what get's grown. 

And maybe we should also adjust our expectations - next time a strange looking tomato is offered at a market, buy one, take it home to try.  Maybe it is not the perfect size, round, red, with a 5 pointed green sepals, but maybe just maybe it will taste better - and the efforts of our growers to try something new will be rewarded.