"The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimates 75 percent of crop varieties have disappeared since 1900: a reduction of genetic variance that echoes through every link in our food chain and puts our entire food supply at risk. 

     I seek to highlight this genetic and cultural erosion in my upcoming book Endangered Food: The Erosion of What and How We Eat. Because eating is both an agricultural and cultural act, my narrative is focused on conservation through consumption-and efforts to save foods by eating them. 

     One of the most innovative responses to the conservation of agricultural biodiversity comes from the collaboration between San Francisco-based chocolate maker TCHO and Peruvian cacao farmers. Their low-cost, on-site innovation labs emphasize flavor as an essential component of both agrobiodiversity and sustainable enterprise, and have resulted in improved flavor profiles for local cacao crops and increased potential for higher profits for local farmers. 

     With the assistance of a TCF Meal by Meal Seed Grant, I will follow a group of farmers through their sensory analysis training to document as part of my book the ways in which cross-cultural development of a common language and relationship to taste can improve crop quality, encourage biodiversity and serve as a model for the preservation of other endangered crops. "