#CropsInColor Welcomes the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Food Tank, and the Tastes of Appalachia
21 August 2019
The Crop Trust’s global #CropsInColor campaign, with additional support from the Oak Spring Garden, and with Food Tank as an official media partner, has as its next stop: the richly diverse mountains of the southeastern United States.
Soup beans, cornbread, and cider are on the minds of all three partners today as the #CropsInColor team makes plans to continue the multi-year, multi-country campaign. Through this one-of-a-kind project, the Crop Trust will highlight the roles that 10 food crops play in countries around the world – and will celebrate their local variations through photography, video, and stories.
#CropsInColor, began in Latin America in 2015, and has grown in reach with each chapter as the #CropsInColor team finds more ways to tell and share stories of agricultural biodiversity and food cultures in action. Each chapter is guided by active partnerships at every stage of the journey, so it is particularly exciting to welcome two new partners with closely aligned interests that can amplify the collective impact of #CropsInColor.
The Oak Spring Garden Foundation (OSGF) joins lead sponsor Corteva Agriscience in supporting #CropsInColor. OSGF works to encourage world-class scholarship, artistic creativity, fresh thinking and bold action on the history and future of plants, including the art and culture of plants, gardens, and landscapes.
Along with OSGF, Food Tank joins the #CropsInColor campaign as its official media partner. Food Tank, the think tank for food, is a nonprofit focused on building a global community for safe, healthy, nourished eaters. And over the next three years, Food Tank will be developing stories around the crops, cuisines, and cultural traditions that #CropsInColor encounters.
The USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System in Geneva, NY, safeguards the country’s apple (Malus) collection. Unlike bean, maize or wheat diversity, which are conserved as seed, apple diversity must be cared for in field collections. The Geneva Apple Collection holds 2,000 types of trees representing 53 species. It is made up of nearly 8,000 accessions (samples), out of which about 1,500 of them are grown from wild seed. Credit: Luis Salazar/Crop Trust
Leaf samples of coffee diversity found at CATIE, Costa Rica, which houses a 70-year-old global coffee collection. Under the FAO’s Plant Treaty, this is currently the only coffee diversity that is being shared across borders. Credit: Luis Salazar/Crop Trust
Originating in Mexico, chili peppers have been a part of the human diet in the Americas since at least 7500 B.C. For the rest of the world, they were “discovered” by Christopher Columbus. Jalapeños, Habaneros, Serrano, Cayenne, Poblano —there are almost 2 – 3,000 different cultivars grown across the world today. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
It’s estimated that potatoes were domesticated about 7,000 years ago. They originated in the Andes, where around 180 wild potato species can still be found. At the Parque de la Papa (Potato Park), near Cusco, farmers grow, consume and conserve hundreds of varieties. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
Located in Mexico, The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMY) safeguards humankind’s most diverse maize and wheat collections. This remarkable, living catalog of genetic diversity comprises of over 28,400 unique seed collections of maize and 150,000 of wheat. Annually, CIMMYT distributes more than 1,500 maize and wheat seed shipments to 800 recipients in 100+ countries. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
A collaboration with a sense of place
The next destination for #CropsInColor is a direct outcome of the new partnership with OSGF. The OSGF estate is nestled in the northeastern foothills of Appalachia in Upperville, Virginia, and the Foundation has a special commitment to the region’s crops and their place in its history and traditions.
“Appalachia is the single most diverse region of the United States in terms of the varieties of crops grown, which also reflects great cultural and culinary diversity” says plant scientist Sir Peter Crane, President of OSGF. “#CropsInColor will be working with the people who know Appalachia best to celebrate Appalachia together through its crops.”
Food Tank will join the Crop Trust on two trips through Appalachia – first in mid-September, and then in spring 2020 focusing not on a single crop, but a full spread of six Appalachian essentials:
- Apples, carefully conserved heirlooms used for everything from cider to apple butter
- Beans, a staple of the everyday Appalachian diet with surprising variety
- Corn, in many forms, with grits only the beginning of the story
- Tomatoes, whether hand-picked red or fried green
- Squash, from yellow in the summer to any color imaginable in the fall
- Chili peppers, powering some of the best barbecue in the world
Marie Haga, Executive Director of the Crop Trust, said “We thank OSGF for allowing us to expand #CropsInColor, and reiterate our thanks to Corteva for believing in and supporting the initiative. Celebrating diversity isn’t just about sharing local food cultures with the world. It is about understanding, together, the need to conserve and make available the foundations of all food security, which will allow future generations to continue these same, delicious culinary traditions.”
“We are just as delighted to have Food Tank join us in the campaign. Their commitment to highlighting the realities of our global food system, their talent in attracting participants from all sectors of that system, and their will to influence the way we produce and eat, are inspirational,” Marie says.
Discussions about a potential Appalachian journey began during last year’s meeting of the Food Forever Initiative, hosted by Corteva, where the Crop Trust sat down with Food Forever Champions and Partner Organizations including OSGF and Food Tank.
“The foodways of Appalachia have a strong draw all their own,” says Danielle Nierenberg, President of Food Tank, and Food Forever Champion. “Behind every heirloom variety and every recipe are memories – of perseverance, of family and community, and of making more out of less. And the region’s agricultural diversity is very much a part of it all. There is so much to learn: from farmers, activists, chefs, food workers, and other stakeholders. We simply can’t wait to take a close look along with the Crop Trust.”
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) originated in the Americas and is one of the most widely grown vegetables in the world. The USDA-ARS National Plant Germplasm System in Geneva, NY, safeguards and makes available nearly 6,000 accessions of tomatoes. Pictured here, Jackson Bartell is separating the pulp from the seeds in order to produce large quantities of seed for long-term storage and distribution to requestors. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
In Brooklyn, some squashes have been city-dwellers from the first sprout. In the neighbourhood of East New York, Marlene Wilks grows a long list of vegetables in community garden lots and in her own backyard. As her customers are neighbours hailing from all over the world, through the years she has grown an unusual diversity of international vegetables and herbs on her small urban plots. But close to her own Caribbean heart are Jamaican squashes, close yet distinct relatives of the butternut. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
Rice is a critical component of the Nepalese diet. Many people in Nepal devote their lives to cultivating rice to survive, both rain-fed lowland and irrigated rice varieties, but the country frequently suffers extreme weather events, such as recent widespread flooding of the southern plains. Pictured here, farmers harvest a rice field at Sauraha, in the buffer zone of the Chitwan National Park. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
Petra Page-Mann of Fruition Seeds is collecting the last of the recent pumpkin harvest in the early dawn. She is dedicated to reproducing and selling organic seeds, as well as seeking out new varieties that may become the heirlooms of future generations. Credit: L.M. Salazar/Crop Trust
Rwanda is the 10th largest producer of dry beans globally, and the 4th largest producer among African countries. Rwandans consume approximately 60 kg (132 lb) of dry beans each per year. This photo shows nine different bean varieties that were bought at the Kimironko Market in Kigali, and is but a small fraction of the 40,000 varieties of common bean that exist in the world. Credit: Luis Salazar/Crop Trust
Ericson Aranzales Rondon, Coordinator of In Vitro Conservation Laboratory at CIAT (Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical), overlooks cassava plants at a greenhouse in the CIAT facility in Palmira, Colombia. Photo Credit: Juan Arredondo/Reportage by Getty Images for The Global Crop Diversity Trust.
Preparations are well on their way, and the Crop Trust is grateful for the support that many friends and partners in Appalachia have already provided. They include:
- Rosann Kent, Director, Appalachian Studies Center at the Historic Vickery House, University of North Georgia;
- Dr. James Veteto, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology, Western Carolina University, and Executive Director of the Appalachian Institute for Mountain Studies;
- Dr. Craig LeHoullier, gardener, author, lecturer and “amateur tomato breeder” responsible for naming and popularizing well-known tomatoes such as Cherokee Purple.
Additionally, as in the past, guidance provided by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and its Agricultural Research Service (ARS), as well as Seed Savers Exchange has been invaluable. Previous collaborators like USDA molecular biologist Joanne Labate and Cornell University squash legend Michael Mazourek have also helped connect the #CropsInColor team with Southern experts of the kitchen, garden, and breeding plot, who together keep generations-old traditions at the forefront of transforming Appalachian foodways.
This latest chapter also follows a #CropsInColor trip to Central America to taste and photograph a 70-year story of coffee; and, more recently, to Rwanda, where a meal without beans is no meal.
In upcoming journeys, #CropsInColor will turn the camera on bananas in Papua New Guinea, quinoa in Bolivia, and chili peppers in Mexico.
For more information, please contact:
Luis Salazar, Crop Trust, luis.salazar@croptrust.org, +49 171 185 9490
Max Smith, OSGF, max@osgf.org, +1 540 592 7068
Emily Payne, Food Tank, emily@foodtank.com, or
Bernard Pollack, Food Tank, bernard@foodtank.com, +1 312-843-8612
The Crop Trust #CropsInColor campaign is sponsored by Corteva Agriscience with additional funding provided by Oak Spring Garden Foundation. Media partner Food Tank
Additional information:
The Crop Trust is an international organisation working to support crop conservation in genebanks, forever. Through investment income generated by its endowment fund, it provides financial support to international, regional and national genebanks, and the world’s backup facility, the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The Crop Trust’s global patron is His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. www.croptrust.org
The Oak Spring Garden Foundation is dedicated to sharing the gifts and ideas of Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Its mission is to support and inspire fresh thinking and bold action on the history and future of plants, including the art and culture of plants, gardens and landscapes. www.osgf.org
Food Tank is for farmers and producers, policy makers and government leaders, researchers and scientists, academics and journalists, and the funding and donor communities to collaborate on providing sustainable solutions for the most pressing environmental and social problems. www.foodtank.com
Corteva Agriscience™ is the only major agriscience company completely dedicated to agriculture. By combining the strengths of DuPont Pioneer, DuPont Crop Protection and Dow AgroSciences, Corteva has harnessed agriculture's brightest minds and expertise gained over two centuries of scientific achievement. www.corteva.com
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