Gary Nabhan

Chapalote Corn – The oldest corn in North America pops back up

It is a truly remarkable irony that most Americans have never even heard of the name of the oldest heirloom maize variety on the continent, Chapalote, let alone tasted its earthy, flinty cornmeal.

Corn farming in the foodscapes within the present-day United States did not begin in the Midwestern or Southern “Corn Belts,“ nor along the East Coast where Pilgrims first encountered this new staple crop. Instead, the oldest evidence of maize cultivation north of the Tropic of Cancer comes from a desert valley known as the Tucson Basin in southern Arizona, and near the Zuni and Hopi villages of northern Arizona.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Essays for Hope and Reflection Farming Innovations

Listening to the Next Generation

For decades, Aldo Leopold’s writings have been assigned readings on college campuses across the country, in classes across a wide range of disciplines. Generations of students have read Leopold to gain a solid footing in conservation science,
history, and ideas.

He serves, perhaps uniquely, as a common link across time. The background and legacy of the land ethic is passed along from one generation to the next—for them to analyze, criticize, and extend according to their own insights.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Farming Innovations

The Story of Mission Grapes – Arizonas First Varietal

Arizona Vines & Wines By: Gary Paul Nabhan Download PDF California can claim many firsts with regard to viticulture and…

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History

Fruit Comes from the Archbishop

Home cooks and chefs of the Southwest have never lacked for delicious fruit, given the fact that native prickly pears, wild plums, elderberries, wolfberries, blackberries, hackberries, and persimmons grow along streams and in canyons from Texas to California.

But a turning point occurred in southwestern agricultural and culinary history roughly 400 years ago, after the first Spanish-introduced fruit took root on American soil in the watersheds of the Rio Grande and the Rio Colorado.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History Redesigning Food Systems Restoration Economy

Cross-Border Credo

We believe that the many traditional cultures and innovative individuals of this region have developed a rich heritage of both tangible resources and intangible knowledge, practices and values that need recognition, respect and safeguarding if they are to contribute to a just, equitable, sustainable and resilient food system for our region.

We are concerned by the high rates of poverty and food insecurity on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border; which creates more disparity in economic opportunity and nutritional health than along any other border in the world.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Redesigning Food Systems Restoration Economy

Ten Things that Tucson can do to redesign our food system for health, environmental resilience, social justice and economic well-being

By: Gary Paul Nabhan Get more of the beef, fruits, nuts, and vegetables already grown in So. Arizona to be…

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Redesigning Food Systems Restoration Economy

Slow Money’s Pivotal Role in the Next Stage of the Local Food Movement

The food relocalization movement is coming of age, for it was twenty-one years ago that visionary Robyn Van En began CSA North America, the first organization to promote community-supported agriculture across the continent.

From her own collaboration with Susan Witt and others in Great Barrington, Mass., while establishing CSA Gardens in 1990, the CSA movement has grown to at least 4,570 documented American farms offering food shares to local community members…

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Essays for Hope and Reflection Restoration Economy

Honoring Achievements of Hispanic Food Producers, But No Engagement With Their Struggles

Earlier this month, when Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar designated 27 new National Landmarks, five of them were meant to honor America’s historic legacy of Hispanic engagement in agriculture and natural resources.

While the César E. Chávez National Monument at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz in Keene, California, rightly honored one of the twentieth century’s greatest advocates for the rights of Hispanic food producers and harvesters in the United States, Hispanics may wonder about Salazar’s inclusion of the Drakes Bay Historic and Archeological District on the Point Reyes Peninsula.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Essays for Hope and Reflection Food Heritage and History Poetry and Parables

Agrarian Poetry: Why We Need Its Prophesies and Imagery Now, More Than Ever

Agrarian poetry? Agrarian prophesies? Agrarian urgencies? One might wonder whether any 21st century preoccupation with agrarian values and agrarian ideals comes as too little, too late, for less than one in six of all Canadian and U.S. citizens live in rural areas outside of towns, cities and suburbs. But listen up. Look again.

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