Culinary Breeding Network founder Lane Selman reveals how flavor can reconnect agriculture with culture, community, and the land.
What if flavor could help transform the future of agriculture? In Episode 09 of Creative Alchemy, host Benjamin Ariff speaks with Lane Selman, founder of the Culinary Breeding Network, about bringing farmers, plant breeders, chefs, and eaters together to create crops that flourish in the field, strengthen local economies, and taste alive. Drawing on her Italian-American upbringing, scientific background, and collaborative work across the food system, Lane offers a hopeful vision of agriculture rooted in flavor, creativity, culture, and community.
Modern agriculture is often shaped by the demands of yield, uniformity, durability, and scale. These priorities may make food easier to grow, transport, and sell—but something essential can be lost along the way: flavor.
For Lane Selman, flavor is much more than a pleasurable finishing touch. It is a powerful point of connection. Flavor can bring plant breeders into conversation with chefs, help farmers cultivate crops suited to their regions, and encourage eaters to care more deeply about where their food comes from.
As the founder of the Culinary Breeding Network, Lane creates opportunities for these communities to learn from one another. Her work invites the people who breed seeds, grow crops, prepare meals, and gather around the table to participate in shaping the future of food together.
In this conversation, Lane and Benjamin explore how agricultural systems can become more collaborative, culturally meaningful, and responsive to local needs. They consider what becomes possible when taste is treated as a valuable form of knowledge—and when the people who experience a crop at every stage have a voice in its development.
Lane’s perspective is informed by both her scientific training and her Italian-American heritage, where food carries stories, traditions, and a strong sense of place. Her work demonstrates that preserving flavor can also preserve relationships: between people and plants, agriculture and culture, and communities and the land that sustains them.
The episode offers a hopeful alternative to a food system built primarily around efficiency. Through curiosity, collaboration, and good seed, we can cultivate food that performs well in the field while nourishing local economies, cultural traditions, and human connection.
Lane is also the author of Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable. The book is available on Amazon in Kindle and hardcover editions.
When flavor becomes a shared priority, it can unite farmers, breeders, chefs, and eaters in creating a food system that is more resilient, locally rooted, and deeply connected to culture and place.
Discover how Lane Selman is using flavor, seed, and collaboration to help cultivate a more connected and resilient future for food.
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