[Previous entry: "Troops claim 'supernatural powers' after pygmy sodomy"] [Next entry: "Austrian hotel bans Jews"]

05/11/2009: "NM farmers work to preserve native chile varieties"

The 70-year-old retired employee of Los Alamos National Laboratory is not a typical chile farmer. He works his small field in the tiny village of Lyden not for profit but to preserve a cultural and gastronomical treasure passed down for generations: native northern New Mexico chile.

Farmers, researchers and advocates worry that native chile lines could vanish forever, taking with them invaluable plant genetics and the cultural heritage of an entire region.

As farmland becomes covered with homes and younger generations abandon farming, Lopez is unsure who will preserve the tradition of growing the native chile crops that have sprouted in the area for more than three centuries.

[ A metaphor for Nationalism ]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090511/ap_on_bi_ge/us_farm_scene_preserving_native_chile