August 7, 2009

Saving Bambi, and an Heirloom Tomato or Two


Our eating habits, it seems, along with just about everything else we do, are destroying the planet. Biodiversity is disappearing in our food supply, according to the New York Times Idea of the Day for July 24. Tamas Dezso of the Times Week in Review quotes Emily Badger in Miller-McCune magazine: “…today, 99 percent of turkeys eaten in America come from a single breed, the Broad-Breasted White… More than 80 percent of dairy cows are Holsteins and 75 percent of pigs come from just three breeds.”

It’s also true of fruits and vegetables. The Times summarizes: “while there used to be 15,000 varieties of apple, there now are 1,500.”

And it’s all because of consumer demand. “Biodiversity is disappearing precisely because people no longer consume it,” Badger writes, “and if we would just eat endangered crops and livestock now, restoring their role in the food supply, we could save them from extinction.”

So we need to consume in order to protect.

At the same time, I’ve been thinking that it might be a good idea to thin our voracious deer population. It’s a herd of seven, plus three little guys that still have spots. They don’t eat weeds, or at least not enough of them. They do eat everything else, particularly the plants and trees that I’ve actually paid money for and planted. (I admit, I do like venison.) But now, it seems that eating them might just encourage them. Bambi saved by the New York Times and Emily Badger. Imagine: a deer saved by a badger. Sounds like The Wind in the Willows.

But seriously, let’s frequent those farmers’ markets and roadside stands, where they might just have some fruits and vegetables that haven’t been especially bred for uniformity and to withstand travel — they might just taste a little better and a little different.

For information on Farm to City farmers’ markets in the Philadelphia area, go to http://www.farmtocity.org.

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