GFHP introduction

The Food Museum Online: a tax-exempt 501 c-3

Global Food Heritage Project

The Global Food Heritage Project identifies the places connected with our food heritage and spotlights the people who continue to preserve these sites today.

"The Blue Plate was a roadside joint I thought was way out in the country. When I was about six, that's where I had my first hamburger not made by my Mom---I loved standing at the little window as my Dad ordered the food, then waiting to hear our number called. My task was to pick up the napkins, straws and forks. The ketchup and mustard were not in tiny, impossible-to-open plastic rectangles. They were in big, messy jugs. Everybody ate at picnic tables under the trees and the burgers were hot,moist and dripping from the grill."

Most of us have childhood memories of food places--maybe a restaurant, or a cider mill--maybe an old watermill, thick with flour dust, or a market where the vendors gave us free pieces of fruit. As more and more cookie cutter chain restaurants served by a food supplier with all frozen preapportioned meals spread across the US and some of the rest of the world, much is being lost--Healthy food. Local sourcing. Personal stories. And more. What about local orchards and groves? Old vineyards, breweries and fishmarkets? Whatever happened to that creaky old farm with the perfect blackberries? The big open air city market right downtown? The ranch where you could see exactly what your future side of beef was eating?

As we lose our connection with our food, and with the people who grow and process it, we lose much of our cultural history and identity. We are out to preserve food heritage.

Food heritage sites and food-related exhibits are also where people, especially students and children, can connect with food. Most people live in urban or suburban settings and have little opportunity to see food production in gardens, farms or ranches. In many areas, outdoor food markets have dwindled. Busy families either eat fast food out, or convenience food in, and infrequently dine together. One consequence of these factors in the developed world may well be the rising obesity rates among many people, including children.

The Global Food Heritage Project's
mission is to identify and help preserve the following entities:

Where Foods Began
Places associated with the origin, first domestication or early evidence of a food source.

The date palm may well be the world's oldest food producing plant. A native of what is now Iraq, the date, or Phoenix dactylifera, is a member of the Palm family, a group of trees with no branches, topped by large crowns of leaves, each leaf from 10 to 20 feet in length.

Growing rapidly, as much as one foot per year, and as high as 80-100 feet, the date palm appreciates having its feet in the water and its head in the sun, not unlike a duck. It thrives naturally, therefore, in oases. These are typically dry, warm places of little rainfall but an adequate underground water supply.

Thousands of years ago, the date palm grew in such natural places, when people were still following herds of wild animals and gathering plant foods to eat each day. Wild date palm seeds dating back 50,000 years have been found in the Shanidar Cave of northern Iraq. The date was the basis of the diet of these early cave dwellers and essential to their well being in other ways. Its leaves provided shade from the sun and shelter from dust storms. Learn more about the date palm here.

Click here for more sites associated with food origins.

Agricultural Technology
Places where advances in agriculture and food production occurred.

Hohokam Irrigation Canals, Arizona

"The Hohokam tradition is believed to have been centered on the middle Gila River and lower Salt River drainage areas, and extended into the southern Sonoran Desert in what are now Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. They built extensive irrigation canals without the benefit of modern engineering or equipment. There is evidence the Hohokam cultivated varieties of cotton, tobacco, agave, maize, beans and squash, as well as harvesting wild plants. Their reliance on an agricultural system based on canals, vital in their less than hospitable desert climate, may have led to their apparent lack of participation in warfare."

Click here for more places associated with advances in Agricultural Technology.

Farms
Historic farms and farm heritage

Florida's Dudley Farm Historic State Park

"Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, this park demonstrates the evolution of Florida farming from the 1850s to the mid-1940s-through three generations of the Dudley family. An authentic working farm, the homestead consists of eighteen buildings, including the family farmhouse with original furnishings, an 1880s kitchen outbuilding, a general store and post office, and a functional cane syrup complex. Park staff in period clothing perform daily chores, raising crops, and tending to livestock. The farm features seasonal cane grindings, corn shuckings, and heritage varieties of livestock and plants. Deer, wild turkeys, gopher tortoises, and bluebirds are still seen in the fields."

Click here for more historic Farms.

Ranches
Historic ranches and heritage areas