Last week, Nature magazine finally gave global attention to the wild crop relatives and heirloom food varieties that will be needed to make “a genetic makeover” of agriculture if it is to become resilient enough to withstand accelerating climate change.

But what is most important is to keep those plants alive and evolving — not static — in the ...

After inviting the great New Mexican food activist Mark Winne to speak at an Arizona Department of Agriculture (ADA) Summit this week, Mark was “uninvited” because the Farm Bureau and Cattleman’s Association thought he was “too controversial.” WHAAT?

Mark has voluntarily served on the boards of Southwest Grassfed Alliance, Community Food Security Coalition and other ...

After spending two days with Mexican poet Homero Aridjis in the desert, I am more convinced than ever THAT WE NEED POETS, MYSTICS, & ARTISTS, to truly restore our common home.

I am humbled by the beauty & breadth of his work on behalf of nature, cultures, and the many marginalized by how this world currently works.

If you do not know Homero’s work, ...

Yesterday in Nogales just a few miles from where I was meeting on food issues with other county citizens, Attorney General Sessions did his “drive by” of the border region, disparaging Sanctuary Cities and pledging a crackdown on undocumented (Mexican-American) citizens. If he ate at any place in Nogales, and if he ate this last week in any restaurant in the entire ...

Awakening to the goobling cries of the once rare Gould’s turkey in the twilight, I realized how grateful I am that so many wildlife biologists and land owners have joined together to bring back (through habitat recovery and population reintroductions) so many of the animals that I know have weekly if not daily contact with: turkeys, pronghorn antelope, Gila top-minnow, desert pupfish, ...

Let’s collectively plan a vision for the border that bridges us rather than one that further divides us. To that end, I’m bringing in Homero Aridjis, James Ramey and Vasilis Fthenakis to the University of Arizona campus May 20th at noon for a forum on green, culture-and-wildlife friendly alternatives to Trump’s proposed wall.

For my part, I see the possibility of resolving the ...

It is remarkable that entire governments are now debating their ethical role in sequestering or wasting carbon, a resource so common and expendable when many of us were growing up that we took it for granted.

We know now that we need to cultivate allies in sequestering carbon, and among those most prone to do the job are mycorrhizae and the three quarters ...

OK, ok, Michael Phillips wins this year’s There’s Fungus Among Us Award for this well-crafted sentence in his new book Mycorrhizal Planet:

“Beneath the imprint of one’s foot, extending down into the soil but mostly meandering nearer the surface, are 300 miles of fungal hyphae. Inconceivable. I could walk from our farm in the White Mountains of Connecticut to Montreal & back along ...

This week a year ago, my hilarious friend, ultra-curious mentor & Coyote-like trickster Jim Harrison left life here in Patagonia AZ to see red wine, chicken thighs & snakes to ingest in the Fourth World.

I miss his wife Linda as much as I miss him… he only gave her “five months alone of rest” before he joined her again. Fortunately, his post-humorous ...

“in the desert, every thing
sticks, stinks or stings.”
we used to say, but nothing
sticks, stinks & stings as much
as the political divisiveness,
ideological chasm & ethical perils
that this country
has hunkered down into.

i would take the deceptive bareness
& downright humbling austerity
of a real desert any day over
the impoverishment of good will
among otherwise caring human beings
that we have been hearing
day after day since november’s election.

we need to make america grateful again
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This spring, I put up a sign on the entry to our property declaring it “A PLANT AND PEOPLE SANCTUARY” 16 miles north of the Mexican border in our militarized zone.

Last night, I went to a training session offered by No More Deaths, Good Samaritans & People Helping People to better learn how to legally assist stranded, injured, sick or exhausted migrants ...