Listen. Listen. Most of you have likely never tasted genuine soy sauce as it has historically been made. The vast majority of the entire world population has never actually tasted soy sauce. Because soy sauce takes years of fermentation in a giant custom made squeezable barrel and there's only a very few remaining people who make traditional soy sauce. Only one single company atm afaik makes the special barrels anymore that are required to do it. They make them by order.
Like, can you fucking imagine what a loss it would be if just a single person stopped doing this? If that singular company simply no longer makes the barrel. If those sporadic soy makers moved on or lost their business. Can you even begin to imagine? You can't. There is an entire taste that you have never experienced for yourself because it is dying. And one day it will die and you will never taste it and neither will anyone else ever again.
Saffron crocuses are dying because of climate change. Because of the rising temperatures and drier climates in Iran, the crocuses aren't growing as well, and of course by harvesting the saffron stamens, that prevents the crocuses from being able to go to seed. The balance of this incredibly important historic ingredient is being undone out of circumstances beyond the crocus farmers' control. One day there is a very real chance that a staple ingredient in food across the entirety of the Middle East will no longer exist. No more shirini keshmeshi; no more yakhni pulao; no more mandi djaj. An entire taste will be erased from the world, and all these foods, all these proofs of humanity, of the connections we have with our past and our ancestors, it will be severed as simply as if by a cutting knife.
How can I even begin to cope with the depths of that grief? How do you live with the knowledge that these things could very likely die in your lifetime? That you could witness the atrophying of entire swathes of history and culture happen in realtime, because of greed, because of callous uncaring for others?
How can I explain to anyone why every time I cook with saffron it feels as if I am saying goodbye to someone I love, for the ones who will come after me? Where do I begin to describe to the children who come next the food that our ancestors have eaten for countless generations will never exist for them in the way they were intended to be?
How do I understand my grief when it is based in the knowledge that eventually, it would be impossible to understand?