NOSTALGIA YOU CAN EAT

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Even in modern times, monoculture epidemics have destroyed crops of wheat, corn and rice in different parts of the world. In 1970 southern leaf blight all but destroyed the American corn crop. Many southern farmers lost all that they'd planted and 15% of the corn nationwide was infected with the disease.

Encouraging biodiversity is one of the driving forces behind the grassroots movement to save heritage varieties. Indeed, Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), the first and largest of the nonprofit associations that exist to promote the growing of heirloom varieties, was founded for this very reason. Kent Whealy and his wife, Diane, had inherited seeds from her grandfather - seeds that had been in the family since the 1800s when they were brought to Iowa from Bavaria. The Whealys started looking for other families who w ere keeping heirloom seeds, in order, as Kent puts it, "to increase the genetic diversity available to gardeners growing healthy food for their families." They soon found, he says, `a vast. almost unknown genetic treasure quietly being maintained by elderly gardeners and farmers." In 1975, the couple started SSE to promote the exchange of such varieties.

As the Whealys found out, there have always been small enclaves of people growing heritage vegetables. Mountainous and isolated regions are the richest sources of such seeds. But even individual families have continuously passed down seed's from one generation to the next.

In the 1970s and '80s, as part of a new wave of environmentalism, raising heirlooms became a worldwide movement. Several seed saving organizations sprang up, and small commercial growers started specializing in heirloom varieties. Today mainstream seed companies offer some heirlooms, although you have to search them out from among the hybrids, and even then commercial sources barely touch on the possibilities.

"Of the 250 mail-order seed companies, only about 15 concentrate on her itage and old-time varieties," says Craig Dremann, owner of Redwood City Seed Co. in Redwood City, California. Founded in 1971, Dremann's company is the oldest in America dedicated to heirloom variety seed pro duction. And yet his offerings, like those of competitors and mainstream seed companies, remain limited,

"There are about 6,500 historic varieties being grown," Dremann notes. "but only about 50% of them are available through commercial sources." Home gardeners get the rest through seed saving organizations, through informal networks and by searching for farmers and gardeners who have been growing heirlooms for generations.

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