Saladino's book documents the enormous historical diversity of our food. In the Svalbard seed valut there are an amazing 213,000 samples of different types of wheat, and 21,000 different potato types. There are dozens of further examples, but to quote from his introduction:
At Brogdale in Kent, home of the UK's National Fruit Collection ,there are 2,000 varieties of apple while at the University of California Riverside more than 1,000 different varieties of citrus are being conserved. Across the planet there are 8,000 livestock breeds (of cows, sheep, pigs and so on) being saved, mostly on small farms, many at risk of extinction. Much of our food supply has been narrowed down to a tiny fraction of this diverse array of plants and animals, and in some cases we are dependent on just on variety of a handful of breeds.
This narrowing of food diversity has accelerated in the last century, particularly in the post-war period. It brings with it several threats, not least that of missing tastes. As we loose types of fruit, vegetables or other crops, we lose the potential for different foods and tastes that were enjoyed by our ancestors, but will be lost forever. Perhaps more importantly, we risk loosing breeds of animals and plants that are more suitable for a warming world, a changing climate or are able to withstand disease. In those seed banks are sometimes the seeds that could feed future generations on a hotter planet. But the skills and knowledge needed to find them, or husband them is also threatened.
Why has this extraordinary change taken place? Take one of the world's most important crops - maize. There are literarily thousands of different types of maize. But a handful dominant today, following the introduction of new US strains that have displaced native maize from its centres of origin in South America. These new strains where designed to maximise yields and ensure that US agriculture dominanted the Cold War period. But
The mazine boom producd more calories but helped to make the global food system more uniform, less diverse and increasingly brittle. Evidence for this came in dramatic fashion in the early 1970s. At the time, 85 percent of the crop grown in the Corn Belt shared a single genetic trait susceptible to a fungal disease... The disease spread rapidly through corn fields, resulting hte loss of one billion bushels of maize at a cost of $6 billion to farmers.
In the context of wheat, Saladino explains why this has happened.:
The entire system, the wheat breeding programmes and the approved list, is also designed around one type of of product: white bread made with refined flour for which most of the nutrients in the grain are removed in the milling process. Again, by law, these nutrients are then put back in through the process of 'fortification;. This isn't the fault of the plant breeders; they are paid to create what the current food system demands: cheap grain and a commodity that can turn a profit on global markets. After 12,000 years of farming such a rich variety of wheat, what a strange state of affairs we find ourselves in.
It is, indeed, strange. Capitalism has concentrated food production into a few select types, that maximise profit at the expense of diversity, flavour, resiliance and sustainability.
Saladino's book tells these, and other unique stories, extremely well. It is part travelogue, party foodie guide and part historical work that shows how food has been shaped by the development of capitalism. For instance the slave trade moved people and commodities between Europe, the Americas and Africa. Enslaved Africans brought with them their seeds and food culture, but were forced to work on plantations that furthered the concentration of food and other crops into a few select types. The industiralisation of fishing and agriculture have ensured that monocrops in animals and plants haved pushed out other types of food, at enormous rish to wider ecosystems. The example of fish, particularly salmon, epitomises this process.
Saladino's book celebrates those who rescue, protect and farm forgotten and minority crops. Because he is a "foodie" he enjoys tasting and eating these rarer foodstuffs, and its a testament to Saladino's ideas that these are never handled as exotic, rather a celebration and understanding of different food cultures.
But repeatedly we return to the way that the food industry is distorted by profit, through massive multinationals that limit seeds, enforce pesticide and fertilisers and trap farmers in massive debts. Saladino says that "more of the world's seeds - the foundation of the food system - are becomign intellectual property and highly profitable commodities". The sense of food as a way to profit runs through the whole of the book.
This book begins as a cry against the loss of food diversity. But as it proceeds the reader increasingly realises that the problem is the whole economic system. There is, of course, hope. Much of the book celebrates small producers who are rescuing, resurrecting and saving unique foods - from alcoholic drinks to rare wheats. All of these individuals are rightly heroes. But Saladino also recognises that this is really taking place in the context of an overwhelmingly powerful and dangerous system. It needs to be got rid of. As Saladino writes:
Our future food is going to depend on multiple systems of agricutlure. Some will be highly industrialised and mechanised, others smaller in scale and richer in their variety of crops and animals. Diversity can help each of these systems become as successful and resilient as they can possibly be. As we've seen, efforts are already under way to make this happen, from the reappearance of landrace fields of wheat to the work banana breeders are doing, using wild genetics and rethinking the monoculture model. Saving diversity gives us options.
But this will only ever be a breathing space. Unless we scrap capitalism, the profit orientated food system will continue to spread it's ugly tentacles, destroying and driving to extinction, rare and unique foods. This is a threat to us all. Eating to Extinction is a reminder that we must right to change things.
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