| Wheat or weed? Depends on who's looking
Mon Aug 29
It seems like climate change is ruining everything, but it's only just getting started. Part of the preparation for major problems to come includes securing our food supplies. Pest, disease, and weather threaten much of our monocrop agriculture (where a single crop is grown in the same field every year), but potential solutions are already growing — literally. By increasing diversity in crops, the chances they'll all die from the same problem decreases.
But this goes against modern agriculture. In fact, the industry sees the accidental new varieties of wheat at the borders of their monocrop fields as weeds. This is because monocrops are highly efficient and profitable. Switching to polycrop farming (where multiple crops are grown at once), however, is just the start of food security. What we introduce to the previously single-crop fields has to be unique and diverse, too.
The differences in "wild" native food crops could help us grow more resilient crops — if scientists can find them. Some organisms are found on tribal lands, requiring informed consent which isn't yet a standardized process. Further, who gets access to the valuable genetic resource after research and how usage could be restricted to prevent corporate monopolization is still being debated. It's a mess of negotiations between nations, agencies, tribes, and corporations.
In the meantime, botanical gardens are teaming up with Native American tribes to expand the native plant sections of the gardens and ultimately decolonize botany. This not only includes reintroducing Indigenous food sources from their "wild" classification but dismantling the false dichotomy of "wild" versus "domesticated" — all while documenting how agriculture worked for these tribes. | |
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