Consciously Nativizing Exotics

By Nick Routledge

A little-considered but absolutely critical dimension to the stewardship of native ecologies demands reclaiming the wisdom and means of stewarding and being stewarded by the natural ecology of which we are an inseparable part. A central dynamic of this dialog expresses itself most immediately in our relationship with our food plants -- because eating is perhaps the most direct, constant and sustaining experience of conscious interspecies communication we engage in.

As plant stewards understand very well, such communication is a two-way street. And yet, almost completely unnoticed, this co-evolutionary dialog between human and non-human culture has, in recent decades, been fractured by a seismic shift in the management of the genetic structure of our food crops. I'm not referring to GMOs here but, rather, to the pervasiveness of hybrid varieties which now, I believe, account for a majority of our plant foods. The implications of this full-scale charge away from open-pollinated varieties of crops to hybrid varieties -- a plant-breeding direction driven largely by economic interests -- are little noticed or comprehended, even as they point to the innermost heart of an incoherence that proscribes coherent and sustainable ecological stewardship everywhere people eat. I began addressing this narrative with my "Deconstructing civilization piece with cabbages" piece in the Jan. issue of In Good Tilth which raised a lid on some of the wherefores of "dehybridization." But I didn't get to the eco-restoration dimension of the story, there.

What on earth has crop dehybridization to do with the natives-exotics narrative? To cut to the chase, once we annihilate the distinction between foodsheds and ecosystems (which is very simply and only an issue of perception) then a revolution in food plant breeding holds the key to a restitution of both the wisdom and means of sound stewardship of native ecologies. If we can't steward the genetics of our food, in place, then any larger effort to steward an ecosystem is condemned from the get go. OP food plant breeding, the key.

As I put it in a piece I recently penned for a seedswap program in the UK:

"And yet, the true absurdity of hybrids is not that they prevent us from saving seed that breeds ‘true’ -- a somewhat superficial characteristic -- but rather the evolutionary dead end that such an economic power play demands. By deliberate design, hybrid genetics cripple the defining biological dynamic that makes possible an ecologically coherent interplay between plants, landscapes and people, through time. The foundational co-evolutionary symbiosis that has existed between food plants and local cultures, both human and non-human, for countless centuries, is thus fractured. We have become unhinged. ...

"Open-pollinated (OP) varieties, as distinct from hybrids, are entirely different constructs. Here are organisms which do not 'de-volve’ at the culmination of each cycle of growth. Indeed, precisely the antithesis: OP crops breed ‘true’ from season-to-season. They are capable not only of being handed down, and improved from year-to-year, but also of being reinterpreted and used as inspiration for new varieties. With each and every cycle of replanting, open-pollinated varieties evolve with their environment and us: as we evolve with them. Fundamentally then, the genetics of open-pollinated crops embody an unbroken, co-evolutionary feedback loop, reflecting a synergistic array of countless cultural interrelationships, both human and non-human, which characterize the local web of life. OP varieties, in other words, possess an evolutionary integrity and with it, access to both the wisdom and means -- entirely precluded by hybrids -- of conscious stewardship."

http://www.seedambassadors.org/Mainpages/reclaimingtheharvest.htm

Why I mention this is because I believe it illustrates that a simple and inevitable shift in perspective in the arena of food plant stewardship, that is to say in the arena of exotics stewardship, has potentially enormous implications for the direction of the eco-restoration, nativist movement. How many people have any idea that the restitution of native ecologies may well turn on this very issue, alone, for example? In essence, restoring an ecological conscience to the art and science of food plant stewardship demands restoring a sense of place to our food crops themselves: nurturing food crops which support native ecologies.

This emerging awareness is a very useful example of how, when we move beyond epistemological word cages such as "native" and "exotic," whole new vistas of common interests and potentiality emerge.