Check out this article by Nourishing the Planet’s co-project Director Brian Halweil in the Huffington Post on how New York City’s Sotheby’s is putting heirloom vegetables, rather than antiques, on the auction block.
The Art of Farming project, an initiative of Sotheby’s staff and their farmer friends, is trying to garner support for the thousands of heirloom varieties of tomatoes, apples, seeds, and livestock that have been nearly lost to extinction as our food system has become more streamlined and the hardworking farmers who still grow them. It is also trying to make us realize that the price of good food and a healthy ecosystem full of diverse crops is worth every dollar and every bit of labor that goes into growing it.
To read more about heirloom varieties and the people who keep them growing see: Seeding Food Security, Maintaining the Diversity of Food Crops: An Interview with Gary Paul Nabhan, Restoring Biodiversity to Improve Food Security and Malawi’s Real “Miracle”
Danielle Nierenberg, an expert on livestock and sustainability, currently serves as Project Director of State of World 2011 for the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental think tank. Her knowledge of factory farming and its global spread and sustainable agriculture has been cited widely in the New York Times Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, the Washington Post, and
other publications.
Danielle worked for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. She is currently traveling across Africa looking at innovations that are working to alleviate hunger and poverty and blogging everyday at Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet. She has a regular column with the Mail & Guardian, the Kansas City Star, and the Huffington Post and her writing was been featured in newspapers across Africa including the Cape Town Argus, the Zambia Daily Mail, Coast Week (Kenya), and other African publications. She holds an M.S. in agriculture, food, and environment from Tufts University and a B.A. in environmental policy from Monmouth College.
