Vegetables are much more than we imagine. What we usually see in the market are only a few of the many varieties that are commercially grown to provide to the population: the others are known as heirlooms. An heirloom plant is a cultivar that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in modern large-scale agriculture. These are not just any plant or vegetable. These are well maintained and sprout from the carefully stored heirloom vegetable seeds, in case of heirloom vegetables.
However, such vegetable seeds are very difficult to come across and the people will not just let you take their respective heirloom seeds. It means a lot to them. Also, that this heirloom is like a heritage and a tradition that follows for generations. For example, many heirloom vegetables have kept their traits through open pollination, while fruit varieties such as apples have been propagated over the centuries through grafts and cuttings. So, such a variety of vegetables is rare and one of a kind would identify a particular family and perhaps their relatives too. In the years gone by, many heirloom varieties were lost and with it many family farms of small size that supported heirlooms. The multitude of heirlooms that had adapted to survive well for hundreds of years were lost or replaced by fewer hybrid tomatoes. They were bred for their commercially attractive characteristic. This is where the heirloom tomato plant came in. And in the process, there has been much loss of the ownership of food typically grown by family gardeners and small farms and are losing the genetic diversity at an accelerating and alarming rate.
With all of this, what is important is that the production of various things were not only provided by the sate but produced at the backyard garden or so by families living everywhere. But, it is clear that with industrialization a lot has changed. Today all we can make is money, with of course a lot of effort, but imagine if we could eat food that we had grown. It would be of a different magnitude. The food would taste different and would be much healthier. It is possible, because there are many vegetable seed companies that are providing good bred seeds that are organic and not produced through a machine which has most probability gone through a chemical treatment to grow faster and which will look better but empty in the inside.