Modern livestock breeds are incredibly efficient, gaining weight at a prodigious rate and supplying astonishing quantities of milk and eggs. That efficiency, however, comes at a cost: the food needed to support such a metabolism. Much of that food could be eaten directly by people, and certainly the lush pastures that support modern dairy cows, for example, might be put to better use growing food for people. But then, where will our meat, milk and eggs come from?

Lawrence Alderson founded the Rare Breeds Survival Trust in the UK in 1973. Those breeds, he contends, are the key to future food security. It is thanks to the foresight of Alderson and other visionaries around the world that rare and heritage breeds are still here to convert stuff we can’t eat into stuff we can eat.

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