ISBN: 9781933392899 Year Added to Catalog: 2008 Book Format: Paperback Book Art: Color photos Number of Pages: 350 Book Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Old ISBN: 1933392894 Release Date: May 31, 2008
Also in Food & Health
Renewing America's Food Traditions
Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods
Conserve dwindling species by creating market, experts say
By Rhonda Bodfield
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.09.2008
Eat it to save it.
It may seem counterintuitive to eat species hovering on the cusp of extinction. And frankly, no one wants you to put a polar bear in the Crock Pot.
But now that more mainstream consumers have resolved the paper versus plastic issue with canvas bags, embraced organics and focused on "buying local" to reduce carbon footprints, this is the next wave in food-ethics consciousness:
The concept of rescuing traditional foods from obscurity by creating a market for them.
Tucson ethnobotanist and author Gary Nabhan, whose book "Renewing America's Food Traditions" is the new bible for what's known as "eater-based conservation," says fewer than 30 plants now provide 90 percent of the world's nutrition.
That fact has placed thousands of heritage food species at risk.
No longer is the Carolina northern flying squirrel a standard ingredient in regional fire-thickened stews. American chestnuts have been devastated. And good luck finding stands of paw-paw patches, a wild fruit often likened to mangoes or pears.
It’s nice to see Gary Paul Nabhan getting attention for his efforts to save edible diversity. It’s also nice to see Slow Food getting credit for doing the same. As Kim Severson pointed out recently in the New York Times, both groups essentially encourage saving the planet’s biodiversity by eating it.
Not overeating it, that is; this ain’t about driving a species into extinction, passenger-pigeon style, by eating it to death. But for the obscure heirlooms out there — Severson lists the Waldoboro green neck rutabaga and the Tennessee fainting goat, among others — raising enough of them to eat may be the only way to keep them around.
Nabhan is doing it with a book, Renewing America’s Food Traditions. Slow Food has done it for years with its Foundation for Biodiversity, which protects certain edible species under its Presidia and Ark of Taste programs.
Other groups mentioned in the Severson piece include Chefs Collaborative, the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, and and the Seed Savers Exchange. As Severson points out, “Mr. Nabhan’s book is part of a larger effort to bring foods back from the brink by engaging nursery owners, farmers, breeders, and chefs to grow and use them.”
That means ordinary shoppers need to buy and use them, too. Where to start? Well, your local farmers’ markets and food co-ops are easy places to ask. But there are online purveyors, too, such as Rancho Gordo, which sells heirloom dried beans.
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