Farm biodiversity is disappearing. If we would just eat endangered crops and livestock now, restoring their role in the food supply, we could save them from extinction.
By Emily Badger July 15, 2009 Link to full article below
Fine diners have come to recognize an alternative in "heirloom" tomatoes. The same concept applies to grains and lettuces and pears. Even cows.
Americans once grew and ate 15,000 varieties of apple, each different in name, taste and texture. What's left today are about 10 percent of those varieties, the rest consigned to a fate people seldom associate with food.
"The idea of endangered species is pretty well established; people understand that a particular salamander might be endangered," said Jenny Trotter, who heads the biodiversity programs at Slow Food USA. But endangered apples — that's an idea few eaters recognize even as biologists sound a growing alarm about the rapid loss of genetic biodiversity in the global food supply.
To read the full article: http://www.miller-mccune.com/
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