What are Landrace Vegetables?

Have you ever heard of landrace varieties of vegetables? How about landrace plants and animals?

Landrace is similar to natural selection, but instead of “survival of the fittest,” one could argue it’s something like “adaptation of the traits that work best for the environment in which ‘x’ resides.” So, sure, maybe survival of the fittest, but location-specific.

Looking at landrace from a natural perspective, one could probably use it to explain how there are regions of the world where the same species of tree or the same species of bird look different.

Landrace varieties of food plants have been stewarded by indigenous people for millennia. They have stronger genetics than varieties that have been selected, over and over again, for specific traits–like a sweet tomato, for example.

Like most back-to-the-earth agricultural movements, selecting crops using a landrace mentality was (and in some cases, still is) likely commonplace among indigenous farmers across the globe. One could even say that hybrid varieties were born from heirloom varieties, were born from landrace varieties. So while “landrace,” may be becoming a new buzz word, like most new buzz words, it points to a very old way of doing things.

We grew these Cherokee Tawny Beans for the first time this year. They’re a landrace, dry, climbing bean variety gifted to us from a friend of GoFarm’s in Michigan. They grew quickly and beautifully and interestingly enough, the beans we harvested more closely

resemble the Colorado landscape after just one year of growing and saving their seeds!

We’re excited to see what they do next year.

Shout out to our friends @vibrantearthseeds and to all other seed stewards working hard to create and maintain genetic diversity in our food crops.