> American Livestock Breeds Conservancy - Raft

"...when the last individual of a race of living things breathes no more, another Heaven and another Earth must pass before such a one can be again."
-William Beebe

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RAFT – Renewing America's Food Traditions

Founded in 2004, RAFT is an alliance of food, farming, environmental and culinary advocates who have joined together to identify, restore and celebrate America’s biologically and culturally diverse food traditions through conservation, education, promotion and regional networking.

Click Here for More Information about the RAFT Project

RAFT’S FOUNDING PARTNERS


American Livestock Breeds Conservancy [www.albc-usa.org]
RAFT Contact: Jennifer Kendall | 540/542-5704 or Jeannette Beranger | 919/542-5704

The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy (ALBC) was founded in 1977 and is headquartered in Pittsboro, North Carolina. ALBC is dedicated to conservation and promotion of endangered breeds of livestock and poultry. ALBC monitors breed populations of ten traditional agricultural species in the US, identify endangered breeds, documents breed performance, and promotes their use. ALBC is the preeminent source for information on genetic conservation in the US and has long recognized that sustainable agriculture is the ideal habitat for many of breeds that are regionally adapted and selected for self-sufficiency.


Center for Sustainable Environments [www.environment.nau.edu]
RAFT Contact: Gary Nabhan | 928/523-6726

The Center for Sustainable Environments (CSE) was established at Northern Arizona University (NAU) to serve as an umbrella organization for interdisciplinary environmental collaborations and community outreach in the culturally diverse Intermountain West. NAU has a long history of working with communities to integrate scientific knowledge with local expertise, fostering community capacity-building, then engaging varied cultures and constituencies in creative environmental problem solving.

In particular, CSE promotes the linkages between biodiversity and agricultural conservation, especially when it retains traditional ecological knowledge associated with cultural diversity. The Center now has a successful track record of working with several Native American tribes on the renewal of their food systems; for example, CSE facilitated the largest seed repatriation in history to benefit the Hopi tribe. Dr. Gary Nabhan, the Center’s Director is also the founder and facilitator of The RAFT Project.


Chefs Collaborative [chefscollaborative.org]
RAFT Contact: Leigh Belanger | 617/236-5200

Chefs Collaborative is a national network of more than 1,000 members of the food community who promote sustainable cuisine by celebrating the joys of local, seasonal, and artisanal cooking. The Collaborative has held successful tastings and briefings on a variety of issues, including sustainable seafood solutions, grass-fed, free-range meat production, GMO's and animal welfare and safety. The Collaborative provides its members with the tools to run both economically and environmentally sustainable food service businesses.



Cultural Conservancy [nativeland.org]
RAFT Contact: Melissa Nelson | 415/561-6594
A Native American non-profit dedicated to the preservation and revitalization of indigenous cultures and their ancestral lands, storytelling, and harvesting traditions. The Cultural Conservancy's Storyscape media project focuses on the protection of storehouses of traditional knowledge surrounding nutrition, resources use, farming, foraging, and time-tested sustainable land management practices. The Conservancy strives to preserve and renew this endangered knowledge through ethnographic recordings and by providing technical assistance for tribes to protect their own cultural legacies.



Native Seed/SEARCH [nativeseeds.org]
RAFT Contact: Suzanne Nelson | 520/881-4804

Native Seeds/SEARCH is a non-profit conservation organization based in Tucson, Arizona. NS/S works to conserve, distribute and document the adapted and diverse varieties of agricultural seed, their wild relatives and the role these seeds play in cultures of the American Southwestern and northwest Mexico. Started in 1983, NS/S now safeguards 2000 varieties of arid-land adapted agricultural crops. NS/S promotes the use of these ancient crops and their wild relatives by distributing seeds to traditional communities and to gardeners worldwide. 350 varieties grown at the NS/S Conservation Farm in Patagonia, Arizona are currently available.



Seed Savers Exchange [seedsavers.org]
RAFT Contact: Steph Hughes | 563/382-5990

Seed Savers Exchange (SSE), founded in 1975 by Kent and Diane Whealy, is the single most effective food crop conservation non-profit in history. SSE's Heritage Farm permanently maintains and displays 24,000 heirloom vegetable varieties, 700 pre-1900 apples, 200 hardy grapes, and herds of extremely rare Ancient White Park cattle. Since 1981, SSE's Garden Seed Inventory (Sixth Edition) and similar publications have tracked the availability of all non-hybrid vegetables, fruits, nuts and berries in the U.S. Using Seed Savers Yearbook, SSE's annually offers members 12,000 varieties of heirloom vegetables, almost twice as many non-hybrid varieties as are offered by the entire U.S. mail-order garden seed industry. Seed Savers Exchange and Heritage Farm have provided the models for organizations and projects in more than 30 countries.



Slow Food USA [slowfoodusa.org]
RAFT Contact: Jenny Trotter | 718/260-8000

Slow Food USA is a non-profit organization that supports a bio-diverse, sustainable food supply, local producers, and heritage foodways. Founded in 1986 in Italy to protect the pleasures of the table from the homogenization of modern fast food and fast life, Slow Food has grown to encompass a worldwide membership of 80,000 in 100 countries. With over 135 convivia (chapters) in the United States, Slow Food USA organizes projects including the Ark of Taste and Presidia, which identify and revitalize foods, farmers and traditions that are at risk of extinction; Slow Food in Schools, which establishes garden to table projects in schools that cultivate the senses and teach an ecological approach to food; and Terra Madre, a global networking conference of 5,000 small-scale food producers and chefs from 130 countries.