CONSERVATION

HERITAGE AGRI-TOURISM
As a Strategy for Promoting the Recovery of
Heirloom Vegetables,
Grains, Fruits and Rare Breeds
Rafael de Grenade
“Heritage foods foster the best kind of tourism. We travel to see something diff erent
and discover that the tastes of heritage foods are diff erent, wherever we go.”
Megan Kimble, Edible Baja Arizona
HERITAGE TOURISM offers a very real way to
know the unique character and flavors of a place.
The mere act of tasting these foods and seeing them
grown or prepared can be effective strategies that
foster the revitalization of local or regional foodways.
Traditional foods hold more than the genetic history
of a lineage as it has adapted over time; they are also
filled with the stories of generations of the bonds
between humans and the place itself.
If chefs, journalists, food historians and agritourists
can directly hear these stories as they see
and taste these foods, they are likely to become
enthusiastic allies in heritage food recovery efforts.
One bite of a taco made of freshly made nixtamal
and carne asada, sprinkled in crushed chiltepínes,
wild oregano and queso asadero, or a tepary bean
burrito wrapped in a giant flour tortilla connects
us with a food stories that reaches back through
countless generations of farmers, ranchers, migrants,
and explorers. It re-enacts centuries of tradition and
innovation in both agriculture and cooking practices.
A single bite can include several food varieties on
the Slow Food Ark of Taste, and thereby prompt a
story long enough to fill several nights running of
how a place and its people came to be.
Promoting heritage foods through agri-tourism
trails has the potential to stimulate the recovery
of a region’s unique varieties—ones prone to
disappearance as we lose small family farms and
restaurants around the country. Inviting people out
to meet farmers and experience the flavors that tell
these stories is not just about generating economic
revenue in a region, but a way of promoting the
cultivation, cooking, and recovery of many foods
that may otherwise be lost to the local, national and
global palette. Heritage food tours offer community
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