Biodiversity Menus of Valencian Origin

Biodiversity Menus of Valencian Origin

– The ‘Return to the Roots’ initiative returns for another year to put the agricultural heritage of the Valencian Community on the table for consumers, thanks to the Casa Montaña restaurant, the Generalitat Valenciana and the Fundación Global Nature

– This action is supported by the LIFE Food & Biodiversity project to improve the management of biodiversity standards and labels in the agri-food sector

A firm step to ensure that gastronomy and consumption are linked to the care of agricultural heritage and biodiversity. This is the commitment ‘Vuelta a las Raíces’ (Return to the Roots), which creates unique menus that are pro-nature. Nowadays, of the thousands of varieties of cereals in existence, only a handful dominate the markets, as is the case with vegetables, fruit or hundreds of breeds of livestock of all kinds. This initiative tries to put the agricultural biodiversity of the Valencian Community on the table of consumers with dishes designed with care to point out this situation.

The action has been developed within the ‘Valencia Culinary Festival’ with three events in which restaurateurs, food critics, specialized press, administration, producers and NGOs participate. The first of these was a debate entitled “Cooking for Climate Change: challenges for the present”, held on Thursday 20 February, which reached important conclusions such as the responsibility of the restaurant sector in transmitting values and suggesting sustainable consumption patterns and the exemplary role it plays in applying many variables: the type of food that is bought and served, the way it is produced, the relationship with producers and the communication with the customer.

The second is the jewel in the crown, menus based on local varieties of vegetables, oils and wines of native varieties and in the case of fish, of species with a sustainable fishing certificate. Thursday 27th, is the first of them and on Thursday 5th March, there will be another one. They are open to the public and to the gastronomic press. “It is a question of recovering seeds to produce again products that have been forgotten. Not only is biodiversity preserved, but it also reinforces Casa Montaña’s philosophy of investing in an authentic, quality and differentiated product”, explains FGN’s technician, Jordi Domingo.

The Plan for Agricultural Diversity in the Valencia Region, and more specifically the Catàleg Valencià de Varietats Tradicionals d’Interés Agrari, has been the cornerstone that has shaped these actions. For FGN, these events, which are part of its LIFE Food & Biodiversity project, are a great step forward and a first point of reference for replication elsewhere. “Return to the Roots” is a clear commitment to the restoration of cultivated biodiversity and ecological production. Something that benefits the planet, the social environment of the restaurant and the business itself that is different from the rest of the offer.

 The importance of agro-diversity

This is a firm commitment to agrodiversity, a fundamental component of biodiversity. It is about recovering the genetic diversity of our crops, the enormous range of varieties and breeds that have been created over the centuries.

The loss of this diversity is a risk that we cannot take for various reasons. On the one hand, and in the face of climate change scenarios such as those that are approaching, local varieties respond to very particular adaptations to climates, soils, and cultivation conditions. “Therefore, having a wide range of genetic variability for certain basic foods is like life insurance”, explains the Global Nature Foundation technician, who explains other equally important reasons such as the high nutritional interest of these local varieties or the enormous value of the first-rate cultural heritage they represent. “After all, they are unique plants and animals that are deeply linked to traditional dishes, ways of eating, celebrating, etc. They are, in short, an inseparable element of our culture”, he concludes.

Finally, it should be remembered that, being a local resource, products are usually local and not industrially produced. For this reason, supporting these varieties implies, in many cases, promoting local agriculture and an injection of resources into the rural environment.

For Casa Montaña, this is a first step towards gradually incorporating these varieties into its menus. This is a unique initiative in which, from the restaurant industry, the aim is to rescue these treasures from the seed banks and the farmers’ vegetable gardens, and to bring them to the consumers’ plate.

LIFE Food & Biodiversity

This initiative is part of the European LIFE Food & Biodiversity project developed by the Global Nature Foundation and supported by the European Commission’s LIFE programme and the Ministry for Ecological Transition, through the Fundación Biodiversidad.

The main objective of this project is to improve the management of biodiversity standards and labels in the agri-food sector, supporting various organizations to include criteria and measures to improve biodiversity in the labels and promoting that production and distribution companies include these criteria in their supply guides.