In the most current edition of National Geographic there were two food related articles that kicked my ass. While I already had some of this information, these articles really drove home a few things for me.
The first, How to Feed a Growing Planet talked briefly about how our 7 billion people will quickly (in the next 35 years) grow to 9 billion people, how much (about 1/3) of our food is wasted before it even reaches our tables and how higher yielding crop varieties and more efficient farming methods will be necessary to meet the demands of so many people. That’s a lot of people to feed and a lot of food to produce.
A few pages later was the article Food Ark which again talks about our growing planetary population, the necessity of increasing crop yields and the super limited varieties of foods we have learned to depend on. It talks about both livestock as well as fruits and veggies and the hybridization of crops to produce more (become higher yielding) while being resistant to specific illnesses (which allows them to produce even higher yielding).
Food Ark talks about the thousands of heirloom varieties that have have been lost since the early 1900s and how a few people are taking measures to ensure that we, as a people, don’t lose heirlooms altogether. For example, in 1903 their were 307 varieties of sweet corn, while in 1983 we were left with only 12 varieties. What the hell?!?! So, while our current crops are producing more and more food, our crops are also mutants that are not native to the places they’re being grown. This means that the crops we have come to depend on are more susceptible to disease and failure (think about the Great Potato Famine in Ireland for just a minute…), which means that we, as a whole people, are at the mercy of the big producers who now require countless chemicals to help keep their crops growing healthily. Gross, gross and gross.
There is hope for us small time gardeners/farmers though (and even some of the big guys, if they so choose). Seeds Savers Exchange has been gathering rare varieties of seeds and making them available to people for years now. I just learned that a bean (yes, one bean) was found right here in New Mexico while archaeologists were searching for pygmy elephant fossils! How cool is that?!? I need to find that bean!
What does this all mean? Well, for me it means that growing my own vegetables (as many as I possibly can) is essential. I will not kid myself into believing that I can grow all my own food on 1/8 acre (at least not yet…), but I will set the intention to, from here on, try to grow things specific to my region (or proven to do well in my region), save as many seeds as I possibly can from the strongest veggies and order heirloom seeds as often as I can. It also means that I will continue to supplement our fruit and veggie needs with locally sourced items and try to avoid the cookie cutter veggies made available to us at the grocery store (those tomatoes might be pretty, but they sure don’t taste like the tomatoes from my garden)! This will be a learning process since it’s just so darn easy to walk into any of those big box stores and purchase any seeds I want, but I know it will be worth it in the end! Not only will we be eating better, but we will be contributing to the saving of our saving of our history and the diversity of what our foods can offer. Kind of like people did for thousands of years. Imagine that…
