Heritage in Danger or Mission Accomplished?

Abstract

They are colourful and tasty. They are discarded by agri-business and free to swap and share. For these and many other reasons, the idea of “heritage” vegetables has been mobilised by diverse groups in the UK in recent years to critique and re-imagine industrial food production systems. However, from activist leaflets to gardening advice, claims about the value of heritage foods are rarely subject to critical scrutiny. Using existing work on the uses of heritage discourse in ancient monuments as a starting point, this article explores some of the ways heritage vegetable narratives can frame food heritage in ways that imply not only different conceptions of value, but different models of custodianship and access to heritage resources. The focus here is on the way three interest groups structure the story of “heritage in danger” in two radically different ways with regards to the passage of time. Using a discourse theoretical approach, I explore how a range of institutions and campaign groups use a linear model of time to paint a picture of catastrophic loss of diversity, which threatens the future of humankind. Meanwhile a narrative model commonly employed by writers of lifestyle media texts suggests the time of loss has been superseded by a new golden age of consumer-driven abundance and taste.