The crisis in agricultural heritage

Agricultural traditions have been at the heart of human development for 10,000 years. Although human impact has been altering the natural ecology continuously during this long period, it is only in the last 50 or even 20 years that we have been threatened with the irrecoverable loss of our traditional agricultural knowledge – and of the crops themselves.

The increasing use of monocrops and genetically modified foods is causing a dangerous loss of biodiversity in many areas. This trend towards standardization, the result of a desire to produce a homogeneous global crop economy, means that broad arable plains or ‘middle zones’ are being intensively exploited. This in turn leads to the destruction of whole ecological niches, along with their rich and varied plant and animal life, wind and water circulation, landscapes, soils and fertility. The standardisation of the crop varieties themselves is causing the disappearance of crops of diverse genetic origin, so that if these new systems fail we will have no alternative or traditional varieties to fall back on.

As these processes continue at an alarming and apparently uncontrollable rate, we are rapidly losing our potential ability to adapt to unexpected situations, and in particular to re-implement past solutions, techniques and food sources. It is nearly too late to look for alternatives. Knowledge of a wide variety and diversity of systems must be kept alive.

Clearly there are still considerable reserves of knowledge and information about traditional crops, techniques and tools across Europe. This knowledge, however, is rapidly being lost as older generations pass on, and even among researchers it is scattered among different disciplines and institutions, often being stored in media which themselves are at risk. There is generally little or no integration or coordination among those researchers who are attempting to counter the disappearance of this vital information.