There are Sundays when I sit down to fill this space for another week, roughly the 1500th- plus such effort, when an idea eludes me.
For that reason alone I send thanks to the creators of the Internet, since a search, while at times becoming a time-sink as I follow various threads down the proverbial cyber-rabbit hole, in the end something will be the germ of an idea that ends up as a column.
This week I won鈥檛 suggest I had an idea, but the search I was doing had nothing to do with agriculture, but there was the obvious thing to write about, International Heritage Breeds Week, found without even looking for it.
The week is actually just past, running聽 May 16-22, but the important thing is to have people think about the importance of maintaining rare breeds of livestock.
For me, this has always been an area in interest. Old breeds, those that were the foundations upon which the current breeds of our livestock sector, have always been an interest.
Interestingly, as a society we tend to rally behind efforts to save various wild animals from disappearing, the black-footed ferret, burrowing owl and others, but very little public attention is given regarding livestock breeds.
That is unfortunate, because there should be some pride in maintaining聽 Lacombe hogs or Chantecler chicken, or Canadienne cow, all breeds developed in this country. They also happen to be collectively rare these days too.
They are of course only thee on a rather long list of rare breeds with numbers that make one wonder if they will exist in a decade, or two.
Most are maintained by a few dedicated people raising the rare breeds in-part as a novelty, and of course in hopes of assuring they do not go extinct.
Obviously the inherent traits of rare breeds do no match current consumer demands, or the genetic traits producers need to make a dollar in the general marketplace.
But, that is today.
Things change.
Hog production today is vastly different than when I was a youngster.
However, given some consumer pressure to move away from big confinement livestock, and the likelihood climate change is going to impact crop production, and by relationship livestock production too, what will be required in 10 years? Or, 25? Or, 50?
Since that question looms without a clear answer, all breeds may offer genetics we need in the future.
So preserving rare breeds is important, and more attention is needed now as worldwide, about one domesticated livestock breed every month is lost to extinction, note
It is something we need to pay greater attention to, and the just past week is there to reinforce that need.
