written by Michelle Stewart, a Seed parent who is a faculty member at Mesa Community College, teaching
geography and environmental studies, and also a yoga teacher at Desert Song Healing Arts Center (2013)
Eating can connect us to the wild variety of our unique planet.
At dinner a few weeks ago when our son Axel devoured his Romanesco and asked for seconds, I was delighted. For me the joy was not only that he enjoyed his nourishing cauliflower, but also that this vegetable is a beautiful heirloom variety that we’d gotten from our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) share that day. It comes from Italy and has this cool fractal patterning to it. I tend to be fascinated by details of origin and production of what we eat.
One standout food memory from my childhood is my dad returning home with a big haul of fresh oysters, then proceeding to shuck them on the back patio, prying apart the shells at the hinge to prepare them for a fried oyster dinner. Then he ate one right off the knife. I remember his attempt to share a taste of raw oyster with us. I said no, being more interested in finding a pearl that could be there, and the fresh slime of raw oyster was too much for the six-year-old me. Food rituals borne of place matter. They tie us to landscapes culturally, ecologically, and with our hearts.
I am especially interested in that how we grow our food and feed our children connects them to the larger picture of the health of the land (and waters) and beyond that clearly to the health of other creatures in the great web of biodiversity. Aside from the mesmerizing variety of life on Earth at the species, genetic and ecological levels, how does biodiversity fit in to what’s on our children’s plates?
The first principle supporting this connection is: Every action counts. What we do makes a difference. It follows then that each bite of food makes a difference to our children’s bodies and to the world around us.
We all marvel at our children as they grow and change daily. As we pack their lunches each school day, we are participating in this web of biodiversity. As we pick peppers in our back yard or shop at the grocery store or go to our CSA or farmers market, we are in the thick of biodiversity and making choices that impact it.
Biodiversity is all about interconnections and a pulse between the individual and the thread of connection running through all individuals. There is the value of both the specifics of an individual species/ variety and the larger population or community. Each species, each individual within the species, and each population hold importance to biodiversity. Variety is not only the ‘spice of life.’ Variety is key to resiliency of our ecosystems and the services they provide such as clean air, clean water and pollination.
Currently approximately 1.9 million of the myriad of amazing and distinctive species in our world have been formally classified. The probable total number of species existing on the planet climbs up to between potentially 13-30 million. Granted, not all are lemurs or tigers. Most are bacteria, deep sea creatures, and insects. This stunning stage of variety is one of the remaining frontiers for discovery on our planet. There are still more than a lot of unknown species, and there is much to discover. It’s exciting!
Rates of species extinction are also much higher these days with human impacts to habitat and the changing climate. You’ve probably heard about all that—and it’s big indeed. As varieties of foods (produce, fowl, meats) diminish, so too does the genetic diversity within our world’s food decrease. One way we can help is to promote biodiversity within food by seeking out and fostering the increase of many varieties of fruits, vegetables, chickens, even beef. According to Charles Siebert, “rare breed advocates say the best way to preserve vulnerable cattle is to keep them in the food chain, producing milk or meat. They even have a motto: To save them we’ve got to eat them.”
When I look at where all the tasty foods on my plate originated, it can lead me to consider my connection to those places. I may not yet have a personal connection to Honduras, but because my morning cup of coffee was from there, my body has a connection to the soil where the coffee plant grew that sourced the coffee beans. My body has a connection to how that plant and soil were treated, and beyond that to how the workers who tended that plant live and are treated. And that, by the way, is a really important reason to eat organic bananas as opposed to conventionally grown, even though bananas are not part of the Dirty Dozen. Conventional bananas are heavily treated with pesticides and although the thick peel protects you pretty well, workers on conventional banana plantations are known to suffer from these practices and lack of health care.
As you shop, you may want to consider going beyond just buying apples, bananas, coffee or rice, maybe you will want to find out where they are produced, and learn about the history of that particular fruit, fish or cheese or lettuce. Discovering more about all the choices you have becomes a practice of curiosity and wonder!
Take apples, for example. There once were more than 7500 varieties of apples grown worldwide. About 90 common varieties of apples are grown commercially in the U.S. However, there are some 2500 varieties grown in the U.S. How many kinds do we usually find? Gala, Pink Lady, Fuji, probably Granny Smith, then what else?
The same applies to many other foods, from melons to broccoli to onions. Food has so many more variations than we may at first think. And by varying our diet we do not only leave healthier but have an impact on the global environment and on our local community as well.
If you‘re not already in a CSA or growing veggies and fruits in your back yard yourself, a CSA is a great way to get local produce of different varieties. And it can become a lot of fun for the whole family. Our CSA holds regular community visits to the farm. How do you think about it all? What have you changed in your family’s diet because of these kinds of interconnections.?
LINKS
Slow food is all about biodiversity within food systems:
http://slowfoodfoundation.com/welcome_en.lasso
Native Seed Search – doing great work on preserving genetic diversity within seeds in our region for decades:
http://www.nativeseeds.org/
CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture)
Awakening Seed is now a site with CSA delivery- see the front desk for more info.
Our family has been a member of Tempe CSA (Crooked Sky Farms) for several years: