CONSERVATION

Close to 7000 species of plants have been cultivated as food crops worldwide, and 200
or so species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates have been raised
on farms and ranches. However, just 103 crop plants and 7 livestock species feed the world
today in terms of providing the majority of calories and protein consumed in the globalized
economy. Since 1973, when the first major study of the genetic vulnerability of our global food
supply was published, this narrow genetic base for our food supply has alarmed many scientists
and food security planners, especially as another 100,000 kinds of plants and animals have
disappeared from our planet over the last four decades.
But what most global surveys have failed to take into account is the tremendous
momentum that has been made at the grassroots level in North America and elsewhere in
not only conserving but also revitalizing the uses of rare food plant and animal varieties. For
example, in 1985, members of just one grassroots organization—the Seed Savers Exchange
(SSE)---offered to one another the seeds, tubers and cuttings of about 5000 distinctly listed
varieties of food plants. By 1999, the number of unique food plant listings offered for exchange
among SSE members broke 20,000—a fourfold increase in less than a decade and a half---and has
generally stayed above 20,000 plant variety offerings since then.
Over roughly the same time period, the number of cultivated plant varieties of vegetables,
grains, legumes and tubers offered in American seed catalogs has increased from 4989 to well
over 8500 distinctive varieties. On a decade by decade basis, this amounts to an average increase
of 31% in heirloom and old-standard food plant varieties becoming available to American
gardeners. Similar trends, to be discussed below, are occurring across fruit and nut trees, and
berry vines from nurseries, and in the registries of livestock breeds. All in all, we now have over
628 species of cultivated food plants and 14 species of large livestock and poultry raised in
American foodscapes. That is in addition to over 4000 wild plants and perhaps 250 wild animal
species that have historically been used as food on the American continent, many of which grow
in open spaces on farms and ranches, or in the ponds, streams or rivers that run through them.
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