Learn How You Can Help

Jenny Trotter is the Associate Director of Biodiversity Programs at Slow Food USA. When not at work this time of year, you’ll find her in her kitchen pickling something or experimenting with the week’s Community Supported Agriculture veggies.

Have you ever heard of the Green Newtown Pippin apple? It was first picked on a farm around 1730 in a place we now call Queens. Thomas Jefferson grew it at Monticello and from Paris told James Madison, “They have no apple here to compare with our Newtown Pippin.” But despite its versatility and wonderful flavor, the Newtown Pippin—like hundreds of unique apple varieties—has lost the fight for shelf space to the picture-perfect but mealy and bland Red Delicious.

The Marshall Strawberry (pictured here) tells a similar tale. Did you know that this Massachusetts berry—dating back to 1890—was known as “the finest eating strawberry in the United States?” But as of five years ago, it was on the verge of extinction.

These are stories that will be told at the August 20 Edible Evening, “Preserving America’s Food Traditions.” I’ll be moderating a discussion, Restoring Heritage Varieties to Our Tables, about how home gardeners, orchardists, farmers, and chefs are all playing a role in conserving rare and place-based fruit and vegetable varieties…and how you can, too.

There are many reasons why we should care about preserving these foods, and it’s not because we’re nostalgic for the past or because of taste alone. Many people are starting to realize that our current fuel-intensive, globalized food system is not stable or secure enough to keep feeding us. In a Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture survey last year, only 15 percent of those surveyed felt assured that the global food system is safe anymore. Nearly three-quarters of the respondents felt that local and regional food systems would be more reliable in meeting the future nutritional needs of Americans. But to re-localize our food systems, we need each region to grow the grains, vegetables, fruits, and meats adapted to that climate rather than getting all our fruits from California and our beef from the Great Plains. Sadly, by sheer neglect of their value, we have put at risk nearly two-thirds of all the place-based heritage foods remaining on this continent that are adapted to regional climates, soils, and cultural traditions. read more »