Heritage Crops
FOR a changing Climate
Climate uncertainty is affecting food production around the world and here in Canada.
Agricultural biodiversity holds the key to future food security
Crop biodiversity is in decline as conventional agriculture focuses on just a few plant species. Within these species, there can be thousands of varieties, the product of farmers and growers as they tested and adapted crops to suit their local climates and food systems over millennia. The gene pool of these plants provides options for a diverse food system and the potential for resilience in the face of changing climates.
Sadly, these heritage (or heirloom) varieties are being lost at an alarming rate, with estimates of up to 75% of them having disappeared over the past 100 years (Seeds of Diversity). Of the remaining varieties, only a very few are available from local seed companies. Our food system is becoming more dependent on fewer and fewer varieties, and this exposes us all to greater climate risks, poorer diets, and increasing food insecurity.
Diffuse Adaptation
One important way to build resilience and adaptation to change and to lower the risk of major crop failures and high food prices is to grow a diversity of varieties of a crop in a variety of ways and places. This “many-eggs-in-many-baskets” approach diffuses the risk to climate uncertainty and extremes, potentially engages many growers, fosters innovation and helps conserve crop biological diversity. In simple terms this approach can be called diffuse adaptation, and like an insurance plan spreads the risk, and encourages forward thinking.
Home grown food security
Extreme weather and unpredicatable climates threaten food security. Heritage varieties are an important part of our agricultural heritage and critical to future food sustainability. The rich genetic diversity held within heritage varieties is the product of thousands of years of plant breeding and seed saving by people around the world.
Potatoes for a Changing Climate
Potatoes are easy to grow and as such can be part of a strategy of locally grown, food security.
Learning from Northern Growers
Potatoes are easy to grow and as such can be part of a strategy of locally grown, food security.
Plant-Based Protein
Edible legumes are an important source of high-quality protein, especially in their dry form. Food self-sufficiency and sustainability are vital during this time of climate and weather extremes. Dried beans can be an excellent protein source easily grown at home. The Heritage Bean Project
Introducing the Heritage Bean Project: Grow your own protein
In collaboration with Seeds of Diversity, the Crop-Climate Project is starting a Heritage Beans: Diversity and Climate Change project. The objectives of this project are:
- to ensure that Canadian heritage bean and other suitable varieties are more widely known, available and grown.
- to test varieties under a wide rage of climates and cultural conditions and share this knowledge widely.
- to acquire, develop and share knowledge for each variety, including biological characteristics cultural practices and appropriate weather and climate attributes.
Featured Blog Post:
Potatoes In Northern Climates
Potatoes are an easy to grow staple for northern people and with rising temperatures and lengthening growing seasons have the potential to be a key element of food sustainability. We are investigating the practice of growing potatoes in difficult northern climates...
Tanya’s Pink Pod: A British Columbia Island Original
Richard Hebda and Dan Jason New bean varieties must arise somewhere. There are of course intentional crosses to improve characteristics such as productivity and disease resistance. Historically however bean varieties have arisen either by mutation of a common variety...
Recent Blog Posts
Potatoes In Northern Climates
Potatoes are an easy to grow staple for northern people and with rising temperatures and lengthening growing seasons have the potential to be a key element of food sustainability. We are investigating the practice of growing potatoes in difficult northern climates...
Drew’s Dandy Delivers!
In a previous article I described the characteristics of an early prairie bush bean called Drew’s Dandy and its value for dry beans (see http://heritagepotato.ca/heritage-beans/drews-dandy/ on this website). Drew’s Dandy is a common bean, Phaesolus vulgaris. This...
Frosty Beans: Unexpected extremes in a mild climate
Climate change is causing problems on our farms… droughts, floods, heat domes, fires, pests. 2023 is projected to be the first year that global mean surface temperatures exceed 1.5 C of warming. It may be getting warmer overall, but the transition to warmer conditions...
Blue Jay: Discovery in the Bean Patch
Few heritage beans receive much media attention, however the attractively coloured and named Blue Jay recently came to national notice through an article on in Canada’s Globe and Mail by Erin Anderssen...