Crop Diversity,
Food Security,
& Climate Change

Miguel Santistevan

News of food recalls, salmonella contamination, and diet-related health epidemics are causing the informed public to question the nature of the food system and their relationship to it. The growing popularity of organic foods, farmers’ markets, CSAs, and gardening are likely a direct result of peoples’ concern about the availability and sources of their food. As people get more informed and involved in the local food community, we find that the demand exceeds the supply and that there is growing concern about the future generation of farmers. All of these issues, ideas, and activities are creating much excitement and involvement in a “food movement” that seeks to address these challenges.

Often missing from the dialogue is the importance of crop diversity. We feel good about going to farmers’ markets and supporting local land-based livelihoods, but organic farmers are often buying seed from distant sources and not necessarily contributing to the continued development of crop diversity. As we continue to experience climate change and other social, political, and economic problems that impact our lives, it will be important to revisit our longest-standing relationship to the Earth: the symbiosis between humans and plants through crop domestication and the development and maintenance of diversity.

The importance of crop diversity is the memory contained in the seeds and crops. The memory of seeds requires an ongoing relationship of the farmers to the seeds for generation upon generation through seed saving: selecting and storing seeds for use in the coming years, year after year. The memory of seeds is of climatic conditions such as periods of water-stress, late frosts, early frosts, hailstorms, and the like. The memory is also of environmental conditions such as soil type, latitude, elevation, etc., as well as the management behavior of the farmer. No pieces of land are identical, and every farmer also has her or his own style. Crops become acclimated to their environments and the management of the farmers over time, and when seeds are exchanged, it provides an opportunity for the crops, as well as the farmer, to learn how to survive in a new environment while nurturing crops with different experiences. The result is varieties of crops of all shapes, sizes, and colors, as well as all kinds of tolerances to different environmental conditions and climates.

Another benefit of crop diversity is that no individual plant in the garden or the field is the same. Some will flower earlier or later, grow taller or shorter, need more or less water, and have a thicker or thinner seed shell. These variable characteristics will allow the farmer to “select” the crops that are most appropriate to her/his environment. For example, when crops move to areas of a shorter growing season, ones that flower earlier may freeze with late frost, or ones that flower later may get damaged by late season hailstorms. The crops that survive contain the tolerances for those conditions. And year after year, it could be said that the crops get smarter and stronger.