Fwd: FW: Biocultural Diasporas Foster Biodiversity

[Guest guest]

> Biocultural Diasporas Foster Biodiversity

> Mon, 17 Oct 2005 23:09:31 -0400

>

>

> Editor's Note: In this original contribution to

> Foodnews, Professor Harriet Friedmann writes on this

> year's World Food Day (October 16th) theme of

> agriculture and cultural diversity. The adaptation

> of seeds and animals by the immigration of various

> cultural groups fosters polycultural agriculture.

> Cultural diversity and the appreciation of fusion

> cuisines keep local varieties of seeds and plants

> alive, increasingly important as industrial

> monocultures threaten biodiversity.

>

> Biodiversity and Cultural Diversity in North

> American Foods

> Harriet Friedmann, Professor of Sociology

>

> Centre for International Studies, University of

> Toronto

>

>

>

> One of the most exciting new

> developments for promoting biodiversity understands

> the intimate link with the farming cultures, which

> guide the continuing evolution of domestic plants

> and animals. The Slow Food Foundation for

> Biodiversity (SFFB) (www.slowfoodfoundation.org) is

> a new part of the original Slow Food network

> (www.slowfood.com), which began in Italy as a

> counterpart to fast food, and now has convivia

> around the world. SFFB shifts the focus from

> consumers to farmers and the links between them.

> Realizing the danger of extinction of treasured

> local varieties, from grapes to goats, and of the

> wonderful sausages, cheeses, wines, and other

> artisanal foods made from them, SFFB found a

> creative way to save them. It created a new type of

> organization, the presidium, which is dedicated to

> supporting farmers and artisans to provide --- and

> innovate --- specific foods. Endangered foods can

> only survive by being eaten. Consumers are invited

> to combine knowledge and pleasure, in order to

> appreciate the foods typical to specific regions.

> The cycle is complete when farmers and artisans are

> recognized and paid for their knowledge and skill.

>

>

>

> By linking presidia in a creative

> network, Slow Food plays with the tension between

> helping farmers and artisans sell outside of their

> region and allowing them, and the skills they bear,

> to disappear. Selling outside risks loss of roots as

> supermarkets select a few products and standardize

> them for sale, so care must be taken to preserve

> quality, including fostering innovation. The Slow

> Food network educates consumers to tastes for

> diverse, quality foods, and their events are an

> education into pleasure. The farmers and artisans,

> usually the objects of scorn or condescension as

> " traditional " or " marginal, " are appreciated as

> bearers of unique skills and knowledge by discerning

> customers.

>

>

>

> All this works very well in the

> astonishingly beautiful Italian hilltop towns of

> Ripi in the region of Lazio, or Orvieto in Umbria,

> where I sampled the pleasures of being educated to

> regional delights by the farmers and artisans

> themselves. What is the situation in the cities of

> North America and other " neo-Europes " --- the phrase

> historian Alfred Crosby uses to describe the

> wholesale displacement of indigenous peoples, plants

> and animals by those from " Old Worlds " of Eurasia

> and Africa? Every major commercial food crop and

> animal in North America except sunflowers is a

> transplant from a very different ecosystem and

> cultural complex. Even maize grown in North America

> is adapted from South American varieties rather than

> the varieties adapted much earlier by indigenous

> peoples.

>

>

>

> The two types of presidium in North

> America reveal a tension specific to neo-Europes.

> The first type consists of crops indigenous their

> regions, which evolved under the care of peoples

> integrated into precolonial ecosystems. Anishinaabeg

> Manoomin is wild rice gathered by indigenous people

> in what is now the state of Minnesota. Of course

> both the rice and the people co-evolved with no

> regard for what is now the border between Canada and

> the United States. It focuses on preserving the

> integrity of the lakes where it grows wild, and

> works with Anishinaabeg communities and the White

> Earth Recovery Project. The Cape May Salt Oyster is

> similar in being a species native to Cape May, the

> tip of the peninsula at the intersection of

> Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Once

> abundant in the bay and diets, both indigenous and

> colonial, it is now in danger of extinction and

> requires skillful attention to recovery in its

> damaged ecosystem. Another presidium works with the

> American Livestock Breeds Conservancy to restore

> heritage varieties of Turkey (Standard Bronze,

> Narragansett, Bourbon Red, Jersey Buff, Slate, White

> Holland, Beltsville Small White, and Royal Palm),

> another native species in danger of extinction by

> the dominance of one variety bred for industrial

> efficiency. Interestingly, turkeys were domesticated

> in Europe from wild American stock and reimported

> --- an international story repeated for many foods

> that took root in North America.

>

>

>

> The second type of presidium consists of

> crops transplanted from other continents, which were

> developed by colonial farmers to take root in new

> ecosystems. SFFB's creativity is particularly

> evident in its adaptation to this new context. The

> presidium for raw milk cheeses is not linked to

> region. Because cheeses have always been introduced

> to North America from Europe, there is no terroir -

> the French word for the ineffable qualities of a

> particular region, referring to its soil and

> climate, but invariably expressed in products

> reflecting knowledge and skill of farmers and

> artisans who are inextricable parts of the farming

> system. American cheeses are based on European

> originals: e.g., Dry Jack on Parmesan; Teleme on

> Taleggio, and Brick on Limberger. Now that

> industrial dairying and cheesemaking have become

> standardized on a continental scale, innovative

> farmers, mainly women, have revived old cheeses and

> are inventing new ones. These are usually made on

> the farm from its own milk and sold locally. The

> presidium links cheesemakers across many regions who

> use raw milk and are in danger of violating myriad

> sanitary regulations which favour industrial

> methods. This is a battle that has been fought

> longer within the European Union. In North America

> there is less traditional loyalty of consumers to

> local products. The presidium links " over 30

> producers, connected not by historical or geographic

> links but by common aims: the improvement of quality

> of American raw milk cheeses and the creation of

> links between cheesemakers. A group of tasters,

> comprising Slow Food and cheesemaking experts,

> select the best raw milk farmstead cheeses each year

> from among participating producers. "

>

>

>

> The only presidium based in Canada, is

> for Red Fife wheat. Adapted in the 1840s by the

> eponymous Scottish immigrant farmer to central

> Ontario, David Fife, it made possible the expansion

> of a highly desirable variety (because of its

> excellent bread) to the short growing season and dry

> plains of Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan, the

> last of the North American native grasslands to be

> roamed by buffalo eating perennial grasses,

> maintained as vast pastures by indigenous peoples.

> The varieties of prairie wheat exported back to

> Europe and later to the whole world descend from Red

> Fife, which is itself in danger of extinction. " In

> the first year of activity, the Presidium has

> involved five farmers in growing the wheat to

> increase seed stock and make commercial production

> possible. The taste quality of handmade bread from

> Red Fife flour has been promoted through an 'Artisan

> Bread Tour' in six Canadian cities. The Presidium

> has petitioned the Canadian Wheat Board for legal

> recognition of the variety, a campaign that could

> lead to more widespread cultivation of Red Fife

> Wheat in the Canadian Prairies. "

>

>

>

> SFFB apart, most efforts to preserve

> agricultural biodiversity in Canada are not about

> the large field crops. What Crosby calls " the

> Columbian Exchange " transplanted cultivated plants

> and animals between " old " and " new " worlds suddenly

> connected by colonial ties about 500 years ago --- a

> short time in the 5,000-10,000 years of farming in

> contiguous systems. Columbus' first voyage carried

> cattle and wheat to Hispaniola (now Cuba), and soon

> after Portuguese carried chile peppers (capsicum) to

> the colony of Goa in India. Now it is impossible to

> imagine farming systems from Argentina through

> Mexico to Canada that do not include cattle (or

> goats or chickens), and equally difficult to imagine

> gardens or cuisines in Asia, Africa, and parts of

> Mediterranean Europe that do not include chile

> peppers (or potatoes or tomatoes).

>

>

>

> Beneath and around the often violent

> displacement of indigenous cultures and ecosystems,

> and the farming systems that connected them, were

> the creative adaptations of farmers from many

> cultures of native and introduced seeds and animals.

> Like the chili pepper that preceded it across the

> Atlantic Ocean, the tomato, whose English name still

> invokes the Aztec name tomatl, has for hundreds of

> years been adapted to the soils and climates of

> gardens across the world, and it has been integrated

> in myriad ways into the cuisines that become the

> emotional basis of cultures thought to be

> traditional. Italian cuisine would be as

> impoverished without tomatoes, which it calls

> " golden apples " (pomodoro) as without its typical

> cheeses and wines. Saving heritage tomatoes from

> industrial displacement is as important in regions

> where it has adapted through transplantation as in

> its centre of domestication. Indeed, the profusion

> of varieties around the world becomes more urgent

> when we recognize, as Deborah Barndt documents so

> beautifully in her book Tangled Routes, that

> industrial tomato monocultures are endangering the

> farmers who guide the evolution of varieties native

> to Mexico.

>

>

>

> What I think of as the secret history of

> colonialism is the creativity with which many

> cultural groups, who immigrated by force or by

> choice, carried familiar seeds and animals to adapt

> in their gardens and cooking pots in new ecosystems.

> They created new polycultures in all senses,

> learning from native peoples and other cultural

> groups how to grow and cook and appreciate new

> tastes. Diasporas were always biocultural, that is,

> humans traveled as parts of domestic groups

> including the seeds they knew. African women who

> survived the slave ships, according to Judith

> Carney, sometimes carried seeds in their hair, close

> to the knowledge about them carried in their heads.

> Other migrants, under different degrees of duress or

> freedom, carried food crops to new places where they

> encountered other cultural complexes of humans and

> their foods. These encounters created entirely new

> cuisines, both ingredients and techniques, by

> adapting and mixing seeds and animals. Indigenous,

> African, Asian, and European influences combined in

> myriad ways in the islands of the Caribbean. I grew

> up with a rarity in the 1950s in the United States:

> a distinctive local cuisine based on a continuous

> peasantry of 200 years, the Cajuns of the

> Mississippi delta in Louisiana. As an immigrant I

> ate my mother's Hungarian cuisine, also adapted to

> what ingredients she could find in those days, but

> also the irresistible, highly spiced gumbo (an

> African word) and jambalaya (whose name is obscure

> but possibly Spanish or indigenous), and corn

> concoctions once called couscou (a word from Molluca

> in southeast Asia) and invented by Africans and

> indigenous peoples who exchanged skills in farming

> and cooking the New World maize and Old World (Asian

> and African) rice varieties that crossed and

> recrossed the Atlantic.

>

>

>

> Now the problem and the solution must be

> rethought. People are urban and in North America and

> other neo-Europes, they are mainly new immigrants

> from Africa, Asia, and South America. The last wave

> of depeasantization is in full force. At last we can

> anticipate the possibility that not enough farming

> cultures will survive to ensure the continuing

> evolution of human food crops and livestock. Some

> who move to cities are displaced peasants, who may

> be keepers of the seeds and skills being lost to

> monocultures. They often value them as

> " traditional, " meaning not of commercial or social

> value to the larger society. Yet their cuisines are

> embraced by the wider society in restaurants. This

> raises the possibility of reforming the links of

> each food culture in its new settings, reaching

> right back to the soil. Yet the new context is no

> longer, as it was even a hundred years ago, one of

> displacing an indigenous with a colonial complex of

> crops and people. Now it is one in which food

> cultures are intentionally preserved, adapted, and

> changed, and in which the context is polycultural.

>

>

>

> The diasporas that characterize a city

> like Toronto today are a renewal of biocultural

> diasporas that have intersected in the Americas

> since 1500. Able to maintain closer ties to home

> than previous generations of immigrants, they are at

> once more attuned to familiar tastes, and open to

> appreciate and experiment with adapting familiar

> cuisines to available ingredients and mixing

> elements of familiar cuisines with those encountered

> among neighbours. Perhaps more interesting, and less

> conspicuous, is the adaptation by local farmers to

> changing tastes by reviving old domesticates (e.g.,

> goat for Caribbean dishes), revaluing weeds (called

> callalo by Jamaican cooks), or adopting new

> cultivars (ginseng). Another is urban agriculture

> and community gardening, which explore the

> possibilities of mutual learning and sharing seeds

> and agronomic knowledge as well as tastes and

> culinary knowledge, among immigrant cultural

> communities.

>

>

>

> Toronto has the double gift of a kaleidoscope of

> cultural communities with gardening, farming, and

> cooking skills from many recently intact

> (agri)cultural systems, and a network of community

> and municipal organizations that initiate and

> coordinate citizen involvement in local food

> systems. The local government part of the story

> links it to Italian experience, in contrast to the

> more strictly volunteer efforts in the United

> States. The Toronto Food Policy Council is within

> the municipal Public Health Department and its paid

> staff coordinate the work of a volunteer council of

> " stakeholders " , including local farmers. It

> advocates for policies ranging from retail sites,

> farmland preservation, wholesale and public markets

> for local farmers, and community gardens in urban

> planning to community-run, publicly supported school

> meal programs. FoodShare Toronto is a

> non-governmental organization closely associated

> with TFPC.

>

>

>

> Two projects of particular interest here

> focus on the mutual learning of cultural groups

> about growing and cooking. FoodShare was an early

> participant in the heritage seed movement. In

> addition to selling " heritage " seedlings each

> spring, the organization has hosted seed-sharing

> events and workshops to teach about them. A

> coordinator was amazed when conventional farmers

> showed up, worried about their futures as public

> farm extension was scaled back in favour of seed

> packages, complete with instructions, from private

> corporations.

>

>

>

> FoodShare's Seeds of Our City project

> (www.foodshare.ca), coordinated and documented by

> Lauren Baker, brought together for three years

> (1999-2002) dedicated gardeners from China, Ghana,

> Jamaica, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, among others, to learn

> how much food could be grown and how to increase the

> plant varieties familiar to them from other parts of

> the world. The gardeners kept meticulous records in

> a standard format. This was simply a record of what

> they already did, making their observations more

> systematic, comparable to other gardeners, and

> capable of sharing. In partnership with an urban

> environmental organization and the largest

> culturally specific independent food box program ---

> AfriCan --- Seeds of Our City had sites throughout

> urban and suburban Toronto. The project organized

> visits among gardeners, and brought gardeners

> together to exchange stories, meals, produce and

> seeds. The global complement to the indispensable

> politics of preserving sites of origin of food

> plants, mainly in the global South, may be the

> conscious adaptation of cultivars in all sites.

> Biocultural diasporas can, as they have in the past,

> increase diversity of food plants. This is the work

> of farmer-scientists --- a renewed sharing of

> knowledge by specialists with formal training and

> those who carry knowledge of seeds and farming.

>

>

>

>

>

> WHO WE ARE: This e-mail service shares information

> to help more people discuss crucial policy issues

> affecting global food security. The service is

> managed by Amber McNair of the University of Toronto

> in partnership with the Centre for Urban Health

> Initiatives (CUHI) and Wayne Roberts of the Toronto

> Food Policy Council, in partnership with the

> Community Food Security Coalition, World Hunger

> Year, and International Partners for Sustainable

> Agriculture.

> Please help by sending information or names and

> e-mail addresses of co-workers who'd like to receive

> this service, to foodnews

>

>

>

>

>

 

 

 

 

Tired of spam? Mail has the best spam

protection around