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Back to the roots of crop farming
Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine
By:
Tobias Plieninger / nature.com
In 1941, when German and Finnish troops threatened to besiege the Russian city of Leningrad (now St Petersburg), Soviet leaders hurried to authorize the evacuation of the art collection from the city's Hermitage museum. Another extraordinary treasure, then the world's largest collection of more than 380,000 food crop samples housed at Leningrad's All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences, did not receive such privileged treatment; it survived the 1941–44 Leningrad blockade only through the virtue of committed individuals. Clearly, society places different values on the heritage content of the art museum and the seed bank.
In Where Our Food Comes From , Gary Paul Nabhan, a conservationist and research social scientist at the University of Arizona, spotlights crop diversity as a neglected but vital cultural resource.
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Santa Cruz National Heritage designation a boon to economy
By: Gary P. Nabhan and Vanessa Bechol
Special to the Arizona Daily Star
Tuscon, Arizona | Published: 12.01.08
PDF Version
A growing number of farmers, ranchers and chefs in our community are working together to bring place-based heritage foods from our borderlands region back to our tables for feasts such as Thanksgiving.
With an agricultural history dating back 4,000 years, longer than most regions in North America, the Santa Cruz Valley is not only rich in agricultural heritage but also well-poised to further promote locally produced foods. From pungent chiles to brilliant prickly pear fruit, and from savory tepary beans to range-fed beef and roasted pecans, our desert foodshed offers delicacies hardly found in this abundance in other parts of the continent. The Southwest borderlands is among the top five foodsheds on the continent with regard to its diversity of place-based heritage foods.
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The 13 Most Dynamic Minds in Food Politics You Should Know
By: Vanessa Barrington
Published: ecosalon/November 6, 2008
If you're reading this blog, you probably know that everything you put in your mouth has an impact on the environment. Because our global system is interconnected, your food choices also affect farmers and eaters across the globe. Eating is not just an individual act; it's also a political act.
Here's a who's who of smart people in food politics and policy, along with some of their must-read books. One of these people also appeared on Sarah's recent post on 15 must read books . They all approach the issues very differently, so there's something for everyone here. Please leave a comment if I've missed anyone!
Wendell Berry is a farmer, poet, novelist, essayist and cultural scholar. He has called eating “an agricultural act”. His work is brilliant, beautiful, and haunting. His essays about the cultural, economic, and environmental destructiveness of industrial agriculture are devastating and important works.
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Responding to Famine in the Horn of Africa: Learn from Past Mistakes
By: Gary Paul Nabhan
Published: The Huffington Post /October 1, 2008
In mid-September, John Holmes of United Nations announced that the mounting famine in Ethiopia and other countries in the Horn of Africa may dwarf the severity of similar famines in the 1980s and 1990s. While humanitarian concern and speedy on-ground action are surely justified, we must ask why this famine is being predicted to be more devastating than others in the past, and how (or to whom) this 700 million dollars of proposed relief will be targeted. Like current questions about the proposed bailout of American financial institutions, answering why this crisis has occurred and who will really benefit from the mitigation strategies are key issues.
Ethiopia and its neighbors have faced many droughts of comparable physical severity over their histories, and their farmers at times have shown remarkable resilience by shifting to their most drought-adapted crop varieties and associated wild foods to help stave off hunger. The sad truth is that famines are shaped less by drought and more by inequitable political and economic access to seed diversity, technical assistance, and temporary food relief.
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Eat it to Save it: An Interview with Gary Nabhan
By Paula McIntyre
Published: up north foodies/October 2008
From roasted tomato hornworm larvae, to pit-roasted cactus flowers, Gary Paul Nabhan has sampled his share of foods unfamiliar to most of us in northern Michigan.
A renowned ethnobiologist, conservationist, MacArthur "genius grant" recipient and author, Nabhan has traveled the globe, searching out the stories and tastes of many a region's traditional foods. But his efforts aren't about saving these foods for the museum shelves; instead, he aims to get these foods back on our plates to savor and enjoy. "Eat it to save it" sums up the approach.
And now his wanderings and his research bring him to northern Michigan, where he'll meet with local farmers, chefs, and others to identify foods in need of recovery and to offer assistance to those who wish to return these foods to the table.
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