Raising the Thanksgiving Turkey: Agroecology, Gender, and the Knowledge of Nature
2011
Prendergast, Neil
To raise Thanksgiving turkeys, nineteenth-century farmwomen crossed wild and domestic birds. Today, this custom is largely forgotten, leading many writers to claim that domestic turkeys, the ones purchased every year from supermarkets, are not domesticated from the wild turkey common to the eastern United States but are descended entirely from a Mexican subspecies traded throughout the early modern Atlantic world. By showing that domestic turkeys are, indeed, descended primarily from the eastern wild turkey, this essay restores awareness of the environmental knowledge held by nineteenth-century farmwomen. It also traces how that loss of memory occurred through two channels: the development of twentieth-century wildlife conservation and the simultaneous growth of poultry agribusiness. Neither placed significant value on the knowledge of the farmwomen who preceded them in raising turkeys. The essay concludes by suggesting implications for today's heritage turkeys and the conservation of agricultural biodiversity.
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