Chapter 3: Springing Forward

...humans have eaten some 80,000 plant species in our history. After recent precipitous changes, three-quarters of all human food now comes from just eight species, with the field quickly narrowing down to genetically modified corn, soy, and canola.

Heirloom-

Any type of vegetable seed that has been saved and grown for a period of years and is passed down by the gardener who preserved it. To be capable of being saved, all heirloom seed must be open pollinated (capable of producing seeds that will produce seedlings just like the parent plant). These vegetables are created the same way natural selection does it: by saving and reproducing specimens that show the best characteristics of their generation, thus gradually increasing those traits in the population.

Hybrids-

Onetime product of cross-breeding compatible types of plants in an effort to create a plant with the best features of both parents. These crosses are still limited to members of the same species: tall corn with early corn, for example. Many of our modern plants are hybrids. Seed from hybridized plants tends to revert to the qualities of the parents.

Genetic Modification-

Involves direct manipulation of genes in the laboratory. Freed from the limits of natural sex, the gene engineer may combine traits of creatures that aren't on speaking terms in the natural world: animal or bacterial genes spliced into the chromosomes of plants, for example.

Many heirlooms have been lost entirely. An enormous factor in this loss has been the new idea of plant varieties as patentable properties, rather than a gift of nature. Due to the ability of agribusiness to produce vegetables that withstand long distance travel and consumer demand for all produce regardless of season, most Americans now don't even know what out-of-season means.

Genetically modified plants are virtually everywhere in the U.S. food chain, but don't have to be labeled and aren't. Industry lobbyists intend to keep it that way.

You can help save rare, domesticated foods by eating them. They're kept alive by gardeners who have a taste for them, and farmers who know they'll be able to sell them. The consumer becomes a link in this conservation chain by seeking out the places where heirloom vegetables are sold.

Let's seek out heirlooms.