Common Ground: Saving Traditional Foods

March 2006 | Thought for Food

Saving Traditional Foods

From Eco-Farm to Terra Madre

By Andrea Blum

In Minnesota’s White Earth Reservation, wild rice grows wild over acres of shallow lakes and rivers. Hand-harvesting the uncultivated “crop,” requires one person with a pole to push a canoe slowly through the thickets while another taps the tops of the reeds and lets the rice fall into the boat. On a good day, 200 to 400 pounds of rice might fall into the canoe. Back on shore, it’s dried, then parched over a fire in birch bark or cast in iron pots and winnowed by the wind. The vitamin-rich bounty known as manoomin supplies a family for the entire year.

“It’s part of the creation story,” says Sarah Alexander of the White Earth Land Recovery Project. “Wild rice has a central part in culture and religion.” Alexander dismisses the long, black “wild rice” commonly found in stores as “what we call ‘tame’ rice.” True wild rice is light-brown and has a shorter grain.

The Anishinaabeg (also known as Chippewa) face two looming threats to this ancient practice of harvesting the wild bounty of the Great Lakes — the spread of commercial paddy rice and contamination from genetically engineered strains of mutant rice. Alexander spoke at the January Eco-Farm Conference in Asilomar in hopes that telling her story might help protect this traditional food and safeguard its cultural importance.

The White Earth Recovery Project is part of RAFT (Renewing America’s Food Traditions), a partnership of seven food and bio-justice groups working to “preserve, and celebrate the incredible diversity of America’s edible plants, animals, and food traditions.” RAFT has been called “the country’s first eco-gastronomic conservation project.” RAFT includes more than 700 American foods (including livestock) on its passenger list — the US culinary version of the Endangered Species List.

Eco-Farm served up a smorgasbord of revelations for thousands of attending foodies. I discovered a rare tepary bean that’s packed with more protein than soy and I learned about a disease-resistant sunflower raised from seeds saved by the Havasupai Indians dwelling in the depths of the Grand Canyon. Recently, Australian farmers used this ancient seed to save their crops from a devastating outbreak of rust disease.

For America, losing heritage foods like wild rice is like Mexico loosing native corn to genetic pollution or France loosing regional cheeses to EU regulations. Today, in Sonoma Country, even the Gravenstein Highway is losing its signature apples (only six Gravenstein growers remain as wine grapes have proven more profitable). The implications are huge: this loss of biodiversity also threatens a collapse of cultural identity that could disrupt healthy diets, traditional ceremonies and local economies.

Slow Food Zone

RAFT is one of many projects floated by Slow Food, a global nonprofit based in Italy that started as a reaction against the fast food culture of super-sized consumption. Today, Slow Food has become a global powerhouse dedicated to defending biodiversity and small food producers around the world.

The Foundation for Biodiversity, another Slow Food project, was created to fight the erosion of traditional food resources. Wild rice in Minnesota and apples in Sonoma are just few of the edible treasures that have made it onto the Ark of Taste — Slow Foods’ A-list of imperiled food. Whether it’s a rare prune in Bosnia or the endangered reindeer of the nomadic Sámi, once a traditional food is added to the Ark, it gains a new measure of global protection. The Foundation catalogues the world’s unique, indigenous food and finds ways to build markets through a form of “mindful globalism” where artisanal products, antique varieties and heritage breeds receive the support to become economically sustainable. Marketing becomes a form of education that helps save both food and its cultural heritage from extinction or homogenization.

Terra Madre 2006

Perhaps the most striking Slow Food event is Terra Madre (Mother Earth) — a gathering of farmers and food communities from around the world. A “food community” could be a band of bakers, cheesemakers, or members of a Community Supported Agriculture farm; It could be winemakers who share the same regional history, farmers with the same ethnic identity, or ranchers (like a members of Marin Organic). But they all share a commitment to sustainability, tradition, social equity — and good taste.

Slow Food’s first Terra Madre summit in 2004 brought more than 5,000 farmers and producers together in Turin, Italy. Turin will host the second Slow Food summit this year from October 26-30. Slow Food will choose 100 cooks and chefs — and 30 world-class academics — to attend as special guests. While the summit is an exclusive affair, the accompanying Salone de Gusto slow-food extravaganza is open to the public.

Tom Willey, a weathered Santa with a long grey beard, has been farming in Madera for 30 years. He smiles as he recalls his first Terra Madre experience. “I met aboriginal farmers from the jungles of the Amazon. I met farmers from the highlands of Nepal,” he said. Willey and other farmers who were flown to Turin’s Palazzo del Lavoro (Palace of the Worker) were hailed “as producers of food who feed the world. We were honored and celebrated. It was very, very profound.”

Andrea Blum covers food issues for CG.

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