The massacre of Apple Lincoln

Lincoln was assassinated. So were Washington and Jefferson. In fact all three Lincolns were wiped out. In the end it wasn't so much an assassination as a massacre, with 6,121 of the 7,098 American apple varieties that blossomed last century now extinct. The same has happened to American pears. Almost 88 per cent of the 2,683 varieties which our grandparents enjoyed have vanished along with the Lincoln, the Washington and the Jefferson apples.

Fruit aficionados in Europe might think this no great loss. After all, Europe has always had greater genetic diversity of apples. But the apple killers have crossed the Atlantic. In 1874, Belgium was Europe's top pear-breeding country and boasted over one thousand varieties of pear. Today just three pear varieties dominate the country's commercial crop. Golden Delicious over-runs half of Belgium's orchards and just five apple varieties have taken over where once nearly 600 varieties thrived.

But the mass extinctions of fruit pale next to the murderous uniformity at the vegetable counter. Today 97 per cent of the vast range of vegetable varieties that adorned American dinner tables at the turn of the century have disappeared forever. Similar estimates are made for Western Europe.

Animal species are being made extinct worldwide: pandas in China, whales in the Pacific; elephants in Africa. And rightly there is a storm of protest aimed at saving them. But our own food supply is being decimated around us and hardly a hand is being raised.

Kiwi fruit and pizzas notwithstanding, a vast sameness has swept the supermarkets of Europe, North America and Australasia. Diversity on the shelves is an illusion. The local grocery in Brandon, Manitoba, sports 12,000 food products and flaunts 56 brands of breakfast cereal. Yet the gaudy boxes hold nothing more than wheat, rice, maize and oats. Three-quarters of human cereal consumption comes from only four crops.

Within these crops also, variety is being wiped away. Most cereals that used to grow in industrialized countries had dozens or even hundreds of different varieties of seed. But now fewer than five varieties predominate for each crop and even these are 'kissing cousins' of one another, genetically almost identical. Our wheat and our maize have experienced the same fate that befell our apples and pears.

In less than a century, market pressures for uniformity have slaughtered crop diversity. Machine harvesting demands uniform crops; food processing insists on standardized products. Each has contributed to the massive genetic erosion of the food chain.

[link to newint.org]

Last Edited by Fhirinne on 03/27/2013 06:36 PM