"...the plant was an ally in the smallholders ceaseless struggles against the economic and political elite. a farmer's barnful of wheat, rye,or barley was a fat target for greedy landlords and marauding armies, buried in the soil, a crop of potatoes could not readily be seized"
charles mann in "1491"
"...new world plants reached the old. in one direction went rice, wheat, sugar cane, and the coffee bush, in the other maize, potatoes, haricot beans, tomatoes, manioc, and tobacco. wherever they went the newcomers met resistance from existing crops and eating habits. europeans considered potatoes a sticky and indigestible food; maize is still despised in southeast china where rice still rules. but despite these entrenched attachments and the slow pace at which new experiences were absorbed, all these plants became widespread and accepted. in europe, in any case, it was the poor who first opened their door to them; and their rapid growth subsequently turned them into desperate necessities."
fernand braudel in "the structures of everyday life:civilization and capitalism 15th-18th century volume 1"
"perhaps the sunflower was ignored in the united states because it was too familiar, but in russia it was adopted for precisely the opposite reason-it was almost unknown. in the early ninteenth century the russian orthodox church issued a holy decree that proscribed a list of oil-rich foods from being eaten during lent or in the forty days before christmas. these two periods fall in the coldest months of the year when rich food is particularly comforting and sought after, but almost anything with a high oil content was forbidden.. sunflower seeds, containing about 30 percent oil, were so little known in russia at that time that they not named on the list. forthwith , sunflower seeds and their oil were eagerly adopted in russia, without fear of religious disapproval.."
jonathan slivertown in "an orchard invisible: a natural history of seeds.
little known and imported foods as a form of resistance to political and economic subservience to elites...an opposite to status foods...un-status sustenance for the poor...diffusion through necessity...a sort of corollary to cohen's neolithic population pressure as a spur to agricultural development...as economies contract and we all relearn the cultural art of eating in season i wonder if there may be an inversion...will people rediscover native foods and the sort of horticulture ( which is pretty much the scale of food production i am involving myself with...and even that may be pretentious...more of a kitchen garden really, despite the blogs title) /agriculture that predated the industrial revolution and the development of the agricultural and food "industries"...will eating habits and food culture change? historically necessity seems to have been a strong motivator for change in this area so the more knowledge about what there is to eat locally the better...so far for me jerusalem artichokes have been the biggest find and the most prolific producer...i have been scouring field manuals of edible wild plants and ransacking the usda databases for more plants that are or were locally edible...there are efforts going on to domesticate illinois bundleflower as a protein rich legume...sumpweed could be a source of seeds as oil rich as sunflowers...but they are small and the plants don't produce large quantities of seeds (and since they are not domesticated i imagine the harvest would be a matter of timing...gathering the seeds before the seed heads shatter...there's still a lot of research to do on what i can grow and how effective it will be in localizing my food consumption...and i still have questions about how productive my suburban backyard can be...this project is slowly moving beyond the university and the anthropological study that the campus garden represents into the realm of real life...what i find there can be educational...now to find a way to apply it to the everyday.
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