American Livestock Breeds Conservancy
The ALBC was founded in
1977 and is headquartered in Pittsboro, North Carolina. ALBC is
dedicated to conservation and promotion of endangered breeds of
livestock and poultry. ALBC monitors breed populations of ten
traditional agricultural species in the US, identify endangered
breeds, documents breed performance, and promotes their use. ALBC
is the preeminent source for information on genetic conservation
in the US and has long recognized that sustainable agriculture is
the ideal habitat for many of breeds that are regionally adapted
and selected for self-sufficiency.
Contact:
Don Bixby
Center for Sustainable Environments
CSE brings together the talents and expertise of scientists,
educators, independent scholars, business leaders, government
agencies, non-profits, students, and community members to seek
creative solutions to environmental problems. These challenges are
addressed through initiatives
that safeguard natural and cultural values and resources. By
combining technical innovations with the knowledge, values, and
practices of local communities, we generate long-term environmental
solutions that enhance the lives of those they impact.
Contact: Gary Nabhan
Chefs
Collaborative
A
national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community
who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of local,
seasonal, and artisinal cooking. It has held successful tastings
and briefings on a variety of issues, including sustainable
seafood solutions, grass-fed free range meat production, GMO’s and
animal welfare and safety. The Collaborative provides its members
with the tools to run both economically and environmentally
sustainable food service businesses.
Contact:
Jennifer Hall
Cultural Conservancy
A
Native American non-profit dedicated to the preservation and
revitalization of indigenous cultures and their ancestral lands,
storytelling, and harvesting traditions. The Cultural
Conservancy’s Storyscape media project focuses on the protection
of storehouses of traditional knowledge surrounding nutrition,
resources use, farming, foraging, and time-tested sustainable land
management practices. The Conservancy strives to preserve and
renew this endangered knowledge through ethnographic recordings
and by providing technical assistance for tribes to protect their
own cultural legacies.
Contact:
Melissa Nelson
Native Seed/SEARCH
Since
NSS was established twenty-two years ago, this non-profit has
protected crop seeds from Native American and other ethnic
cultures in the binational desert southwest. Its research and
conservation programs maintain over two thousand varieties of
seeds, and their oral histories, native to the region. Its
educational and culinary events have focused on the role that
native and traditional “slow release” foods can play in combating
diabetes.
Contact: Kevin Dahl
Seed
Savers Exchange
SSE was
founded in 1975 by Kent and Diane Whealy, is the single most
effective food crop conservation non-profit in history. SSE’s
Heritage Farm permanently maintains and displays 24,000 heirloom
vegetable varieties, 700 pre-1900 apples, 200 hardy grapes, and
herds of extremely rare Ancient White Park cattle. Since 1981,
SSE’s Garden Seed Inventory (Sixth Edition) and similar
publications have tracked the availability of all non-hybrid
vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries in the U.S. Using Seed Savers
Yearbook, SSE’s members annually offer 12,000 varieties of
heirloom vegetables, almost twice as many non-hybrid varieties as
are offered by the entire U.S. mail-order garden seed industry.
Seed Savers Exchange and Heritage Farm have provided the models
for organizations and projects in more than 30 countries.
Contact: Kent Whealy
Slow
Food USA
Slow Food USA
is a
nonprofit, educational, eco-gastronomic organization that supports
a bio-diverse, sustainable food supply, local producers, heritage foodways and rediscovering the pleasures of the table. Founded in
1989 in Italy as a response to the opening of a McDonald’s in
Rome, Slow Food has grown to encompass a worldwide membership of
70,000 members in 45 countries. With over 10,000 members and 135
convivia (chapters) in the United States, Slow Food USA organizes
projects including the Ark of Taste, which identifies and
revitalizes foods, farmers and traditions that are at risk of
extinction; and Slow Food in Schools, which establishes garden to
table projects in schools that cultivate the senses and teach an
ecological approach to food.
Contact:
Makale Faber
