R.A.F.T.: It’s “not about taking the rarest animal and eating it”
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A typical exchange at the Renewing America’s Food Traditions Café might go something like this:
Waiter: How do you like your species?
Patron: Very rare, thank you.
Alas, the R.A.F.T. Café exists only in my mind—but it serves to illustrate a point: a whole lot of local breeds of popular (and not-so-popular) foods are in short supply these days.
Beginning in the first half of the twentieth century, America’s food supply started to morph into the big business, industrialized model we know today. Quirky local breeds, and their accompanying local recipes, were discarded and forgotten in favor of tougher fruits and veggies that could better manage a cross-country trek in the back of a truck. Livestock were bred for a single purpose—like the Holstein for its greater milk production—and other breeds fell from favor until their numbers dwindled to near-extinction.
Gary Nabhan wants to reintroduce you to America’s forgotten foods.
Sure, the average grocery store may carry six or seven different types of apples, some of them grown in America, but a century ago, Americans grew and ate more than 15,000 named varieties. Today you’d probably be lucky if you could find the trees representing the 1,500 kinds remaining in North America, according to Gary Paul Nabhan, editor of Renewing America’s Food Traditions. The book lists some of the more than 1,000 food species and varieties once savored by Americans, but are now on the verge of disappearing from the landscape altogether.
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By displaying these food histories, printing pictures of them in their natural glory and sharing accompanying recipes from early American cooks–Mashpee Wampanoag quahog chowder anyone?–Nabhan hopes to encourage a concept known as eater-based conservation.
“This is not about taking the rarest animal and eating it,” says Nabhan, director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University. “We’re reminding people of the deep historical connections–that some of these foods that are endangered once fed hundreds of thousands of people. We want that to be a motivating force for eaters to be more selective of their choices.”
Nabhan’s list is organized by regional foodsheds, areas so named by the Renewing America’s Food Traditions’ collaborative to highlight foods–such as gumbo–that are somewhat iconic.
The effort was founded by seven organizations, including Slow Food USA, American Livestock Breeds Conservancy and Chefs Collaborative, which came together in 2004 to help conserve, restore and celebrate North America’s unique food traditions. Nabhan compiled his list by working with collaborative members and talking to farmers, fishermen, foragers, herders, chefs, food historians and folklorists about what foods they’ve seen dramatically decline over the past few decades.
