As a grower of heirloom fruits and vegetables, I am increasingly concerned about the agrichemical giants and the fare they serve. Hybrid vegetables and fruits now dominate our markets. This produce is bred primarily to streamline mechanical harvesting and handling. Unfortunately, mass plantings of hybrid fruits and vegetables increase the potential for agricultural disasters, such as the Irish Potato Famine in the 1840s and corn blight in the southern United States in the 1970s. Homogeneity makes crops more vulnerable to pests and disease. We find strength in agricultural biodiversity. As a devoted gardener, advocate and author, my mission is to promote agricultural biodiversity and preserve the genetic variety of our fruits and vegetables.

Heirloom fruits and vegetables are bred for taste and table quality, not assembly-line farming. The seeds of heirloom plants are passed from one generation to the next, and, much like any family heirloom, represent a direct link to our past. Generations of farmers have preserved heirloom fruits and vegetables because they are old-fashioned, soul-satisfying foods, and we should celebrate them.

I have been growing vegetables since I was 17. I seem to have a natural gift for kitchen gardening, perhaps because my father, Sol Goldman, was a grocer before he became a real estate investor. When I was a child, he would take me to grocery stores on Saturday afternoons and teach me how to select the best cherries and melons. Not long after I began gardening, a neighbor encouraged me to enter county fairs. I spent the next 10 years focused on the quest for blue ribbons; learning how to win was, for me, the equivalent of earning another doctoral degree. I eventually garnered dozens of blue ribbons, but I did not discover heirloom vegetables until I read about them in a cookbook in my early 30s. As I realized how delightful and how beautiful they can be, I decided to set aside my professional career as a child psychologist to dedicate myself to growing heirloom vegetables and preserving their seeds.

Vegetative State
I have since become involved with a group of concerned farmers and gardeners known as seed savers, who work to nurture and maintain these endangered strains. In 1975, Kent and Diane Whealy founded Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization based in Decorah, Iowa, focused on preserving our vanishing vegetable heritage. I am now vice president of the board and, in my role as trustee of the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust, a financial backer. Seed Savers Exchange currently has 8,000 members. The group’s annual gathering, known as the Camp Out Convention, attracts hundreds of gardeners, orchardists, Amish farmers—even chefs and ethnobotanists.

The restaurant industry is indeed noticing the culinary value of heirloom fruits and vegetables. Gourmet restaurants in New York, such as Craft and Grammercy Tavern, and in Paris now feature dishes prepared with heirloom fruits or vegetables on their menus. As chefs and gourmets have discovered, when it comes to taste, hybrids have nothing over heirlooms. Whenever I taste something special in a restaurant, I wrap the seeds in a handkerchief, take them home and plant them.

Personally, I grow mainly to harvest the seeds. Seeds are beautiful. I squirrel them away; I have entire refrigerators just for seeds. I also use some of my produce for cooking, but I give away most of my produce to friends. Occasionally, I load my pickup truck with a few dozen varieties of a fruit or vegetable and take it to a farmers’ market, where shoppers can taste-test my heirlooms.

In the United States, we boast a rich legacy of seeds from across the globe. Some of these seeds arrived here with immigrants from Europe. Seeds were so precious to them that they sewed them into dress hems and hatbands to prevent them from being stolen. The Whealys founded Seed Savers Exchange after Diane’s terminally ill grandfather gave them seeds from two tomato plants that his parents brought from Bavaria to Iowa in the 1870s. These plants, and these connections to our past, are worth preserving.

Amy Goldman is trustee of the Lillian Goldman Charitable Trust and vice president of the board of Seed Savers Exchange.