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Renewing America's Food Traditions

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A century ago, when my Lebanese grandparents immigrated to the Great Lakes region, they were amazed by the country’s fertile soils, rich waters and the unfathomable diversity of foods. There were hundreds of varieties of cherries and plums being grown on neighboring farms; and lake perch, smelt and pike were abundant in the waters in front of their home in the Indiana Dunes. At the time, most U.S. households were still involved in some kind of gardening, farming, foraging or fishing and my grandfather became a fruit peddler and fishmonger. When I would visit, “Papa,” as I called him, would appear with a fresh-picked heirloom plum hidden in his fist. He would open his hand and present me with a purplish red gift ready to explode with flavor.

“This I bicked for you,” my grandfather would tell me in his thick Arab accent. “Have you ever tasted anything so good?” As I bit into it, the plum’s mellow juices ran down my chin and filled my mouth with flavors I had yet to put words to.

Today, that plum is almost impossible to find. Many of the small farms of my grandfather’s time have been developed or converted to a monoculture of corn, soy, rice or wheat. In the last 100 years, more than 1,000 varieties of uniquely American seeds and breeds, fruits and fish, greens and game have declined and are currently at risk of extinction. More than 76 food varieties have vanished altogether. Some, such as the wild Atlantic salmon and the sugar maple, are threatened by environmental factors ranging from damming of rivers to climate change.

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