i'll have what she's having- [Added April, 29, 2008]

because soon, i won't have a choice.

'In fact, of the 7100 named varieties of apples growing in the U.S. in the 1800s, some 6800 are probably now extinct. Ninety-five percent of almost 600 garden bean varieties, 95% of more than 500 cabbage varieties, and 81% of 400 tomato varieties have also disappeared.

In the 1900s, the commercialization and increasing globalization of agriculture, as well as the marketing and distribution of seeds by commercial and government agencies, combined to produce motive and method for the replacement of numerous diverse crop varieties with a smaller number of more genetically homogeneous, scientifically-bred varieties. Garrison Wilkes likened the process to "taking stones from the foundation in order to repair the roof." The new varieties unintentionally undermined the biological basis upon which they were built. Production leapt forward, but much crop diversity was lost, as noted by ample anecdotal accounts. But "because no one can say exactly how much diversity once existed, no one can say exactly how much has been lost historically," as FAO's first global assessment of the state of crop diversity pointed out.

The time has come to acknowledge both the old and familiar threats to crop diversity as well as the new challenges, collect samples of the remaining diversity, safeguard all of it in genebanks, and guard those banks. 

source:  http://www.croptrust.org