Hardwear Sessions

Modern industrial agriculture depends on monoculture. Farmers cover entire fields with a single variety of corn, or wheat, or other crop, all carrying the same genetic profile. In some cases, they are outright clones, propagated through asexual means rather than open pollination. Monocultures are fragile. Often, when one plant falls, the entire crop falls together.

Though there's been much media coverage of GMOs and genetic engineering, breeders still create plant varieties the old fashioned way, by hybridizing varieties with desirable characteristics.

The desired trait (a resistance to potato blight, or to mildew) can often be found in an existing variety. But this method only works if there are enough varieties around. Pests and diseases mutate, viruses circumvent a plant's best defenses, local climate conditions change. Continuous participation in the "arms race" represents one way for farmers to beat the odds. According to the Seed Savers Exchange, seed banks represent a hedge against disaster. Breeders turn to seed banks for unusual varieties that offer superior disease resistance, or taste, or texture, or better color. Think of the seed bank as a vast palette, a reserve of paints and colors that breeders can use to "touch up" existing varieties, or create new ones.

Though lately there has been some commercial interest in heirloom varietals (witness the "heirloom tomato" boom, with Emeril-branded tomatoes appearing at my local Safeway), most commercial growers stay away from heirlooms because they weren't bred for large-scale, industrial agriculture of the sort that we practice today. Many heirloom fruits are fragile and difficult to ship. They must be hand-picked and hand-packed. They do not excel under today's typical harvest and transport conditions (being picked green, spending long hours on the road, in cold storage, being piled up like bricks in a supermarket). The same goes for heirloom vegetables, such as lettuces or corn.

Most heirloom varieties do fine in a home garden. Some are suitable for small, boutique operations. To keep unusual varieties of apples, squashes, and other fruits and vegetables from going the way of the dodo, organizations like Seed Savers Exchange and Slow Food USA encourage home gardeners grow heirloom varieties in their own gardens, and preserve the seed for future generations.

I admit that it is tempting to buy the "easy" varieties. They are cheap and plentiful. I can find seeds or starts at any garden center. But growing the same commercial varieties at home seems to defeat the purpose of a home garden. Why grow something that I can buy in the supermarket?

Think of the garden in terms of Noah's Ark. Slow Food USA's "Ark of Taste" program hopes to save biological and cultural diversity, one bit at a time. But the Ark also hopes to save "endangered tastes," to cultivate an aesthetic appreciation of outstanding heirloom plants (and animals).

The Ark's mission statement gets at the heart of the matter. Though there are instrumental reasons for saving heirloom plants, it all comes back to emotion and sentiment. I have heard heirloom plants described as "living antiques." Isn't it wonderful, in this day and age, to do something that isn't economically rational? In a world that so often values sense over sensibility, isn't it wonderful to do something for the sake of aesthetics and sentiment?