Food from the Radical Center by Gary Paul Nabhan

Author:Gary Paul Nabhan
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: SOC055000 Social Science / Agriculture & Food
Publisher: Island Press

Fortunately, Frank Reese Jr. has inspired many others to jump into the dance of recovering rare poultry breeds. Although he remains among the most skilled breeders working today, he is no longer alone in such efforts. The American Livestock Conservancy recorded no fewer than 1,500 private poultry breeders, 48 hatcheries, and 7 universities now engaged in the recovery of these rare birds.

When the Conservancy conducted its Great American Poultry Census in 2015 and 2016, it found that rebuilding this support network had enabled more than four million poultry enthusiasts who are engaged in raising turkeys, ducks, geese, and chickens of distinctive breeds. Among the eighty-one rarest poultry breeds in North America, 26 percent of the rare breeds of turkeys are more numerous than when last counted between 2000 and 2006.

Remarkably, more than half of all those rare poultry breeds are now represented by more than a thousand breeding birds, making them far more secure than reflected in the previous censuses. Seven of the breeds are represented by more than five thousand breeding birds, which means they are getting close to full recovery.

After fewer than fifteen years of bringing these birds back from the brink of extinction, fifteen chicken breeds, five duck breeds, three goose breeds, and one turkey breed are more secure than they have been any time since World War II. However, it would be missing the point to think that these herculean efforts are merely about the “genetic recovery” of poultry antiquities that have been dismissed as “obsolete” since they hold no sweet spot in the current American marketplace.

Today, you can find more than a thousand producers who market the eggs and meat of formerly threatened poultry breeds through independently owned restaurants and charcuteries: Buckeye, Delaware, Dominique, Java, and New Hampshire chickens; Cayuga ducks; Cotton Patch geese; and American Bronze, Black Spanish, Bourbon Red, Narragansett, and Slate turkeys.

Patrick Martins of Heritage Foods USA has argued that rural breeders could not have accomplished such a rapid recovery of these rare breeds were it not for urban chefs who were immediately willing to pay a fixed price per pound of meat—often in advance—to the farmers themselves: “The chefs have really rallied behind the notion of restaurant-supported agriculture. They have helped maintain a beautiful landscape all across America.”

I was struck by the ethical underpinnings of Patrick’s words. A bridge between rural and urban peoples, who (re)discover the values they hold in common while working together to defend rare breeds and to make our shared landscapes more beautiful.

Something that might be dismissed as trivial—reviving the likes of rare domestic poultry breeds—has now created a movement that honors this modest portion of Creation. From this “safe nest,” phoenixes are arising from the ashes to live among us once more.

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