Many of us work to save species, habitats, seeds, breeds and the earth itself. Others work to ensure that the fruits of these labors—the healthy food harvested from restored landscapes—actually reaches our communities—including the elderly, infirm or otherwise disadvantaged—to benefit them, to delight them, to nourish them and to enliven their sensory responses to this beautiful, delicious world we live within.

Savoring the world does not mean consuming it as much as valuing its species and peoples and landscapes for their ...

A rather remarkable visit from two great restoration ecologists this last week, James and Thibaud Aronson… they are in the thick of discussions among public health scientists and ecological restoration scientists about how restored habitats not only buffer us from the arrival of pests, diseases and weeds, but directly improve human health and well-being.

We probably need a 1000 more scientists like them working on the connection between the health of the soil microbiome and that of the human microbiome alone… ...

So should it be any surprise that when we break bread and eat together with people from backgrounds different than our own, fear falls away and we find previously unanticipated common ground?

If there is a corollary to that principle, it is that when we get outside to work side by side together to restore food-producing landscapes and to recover historically declining food species or varieties, we harvest an even more delicious capacity to respect one another and move toward long-term ...

In rural areas I know well, the elders I know love the land but hate the feeling that their grandchildren will have to leave their homes and move elsewhere to find livable wages and satisfying livelihoods.

What if we helped them find jobs helping to recover rare wild food species and to increase the food-producing capacity of their rural landscapes through restoring habitats for fish and game, wild foraged plants and other non-timber natural products? What if family members had a ...

This week, Jews and Christians are mulling over these words from a time when thousands of refugees hungry for food and justice had fled Egypt and were anxious about their future:  “And this is how you refugees shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, only sandals on your feet, and your shepherd’s staff in your hand. You shall eat it in haste, in hope of safely passing-over.”

We need a food movement that is fully responsive to the millions ...

Two trends within the community-based restoration movement should interest all environmentalists; they are a.) the ecological restoration of food-producing landscapes; and b.) the recovery of wild species threatened by both historic overharvesting and habitat degradation.

There are roughly 4000 species of edible plants and 250 species of edible fish and game in North America. From my surveys over the last decade, it appears that about 17% of the species are being recovered by collaborations involving tribes, other hunters, fishers and foragers, ...

Need some good news? Grassroots efforts –largely free of governmental, multinational corporations and national philanthropic foundations– have increased the diversity of cultivated food plant varieties in the U.S. food system from 9720 varieties in the mid-1980s to 21,640 varieties in the mid 2010s. THAT’S 2.2 TIMES MORE FOOD PLANT DIVERSITY THAN WHAT THERE WAS IN OUR FIELDS, GARDENS, ORCHARDS AND TABLES 30 YEARS BEFORE!

We have gone from just 375 non-profit and micro-enterprise seed and nursery outlets in the U.S. in ...

The new Seed Trade Census released by the Seed Savers Exchange reports that over 12,892 open-pollinated varieties of vegetables, culinary herbs, legumes and grains are now available in the United States, more than twice the number (5534) available in 1981, when the census began.

Many of those annual seed crop varieties have been restored for use in our gardens, on our farms and on our tables by people like you, working through informal networks in and among communities of growers independent ...

With regard to achieving long-term successes in edible species recovery and foodshed restoration, we now know that the diversity of such players involved in such efforts, has everything to do with the successful revival of the richness of nutritious foods and delicious drinks that we are beginning to see in communities all across the continent.

In essence, the best means of assuring a diversity of foods for our food security has everything to do with sanctioning and supporting a diversity of ...