Saving Heritage Breeds
A Love Story
Driving through the countryside, you may have you noticed that nowadays it’s paddock after paddock of merino sheep, while virtually every cow lining up for milking is black and white. Your neighbours’ backyard chooks are likely to be Isa Browns. You probably can’t even remember the last time you saw a pig, because they’re all hidden away in sheds.
An extinction crisis is quietly unfolding on our farms. Since mid-last century, advancements in animal husbandry have resulted in the global adoption of a small number of fast-growing, high-yielding livestock types. While performance and profitability gains have been extraordinary, they have led to the extinction of a unique livestock breed globally each month for over three decades. This book tells the story of the Australian farmers working hard to save the remaining heritage breeds of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. Gressier argues that heritage breed farmers are motivated by one of the most powerful conservation tools we have: love.
Catie Gressier is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at the University of Western Australia, and a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Curtin University.
Catie Gressier is a cultural anthropologist whose research explores foodways, tourism, and health and illness. She is the author of At Home in the Okavango: White Batswana Narratives of Emplacement and Belonging (Berghahn), and Illness, Identity and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters (Palgrave). Catie is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the School of Agriculture and Environment at UWA, and a PhD candidate at Curtin University. She is a Director of the Board of the Rare Breeds Trust of Australia, an Editorial Board member of Anthropological Forum, and the Coordinator of the Ecology, People, Place (EcoPeoPle) research network.
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