Gary Nabhan

Heirloom Apples, Heritage Orchards & Cideries Bring Back Food Diversity and Jobs to Our Communities

While some media reports assume that efforts to protect biodiversity in our landscapes inevitably cost jobs in our communities, heritage orchards and cideries prove otherwise.

Since the economic downturn, study after study show that new food and beverage microenterprises have become one of the most effective means of jumpstarting local economies hurt since the 2009 downturn. They not only create jobs for local residents rather that outsourcing the work to distant places, but they purchase goods and materials from other local businesses and make alliances with independent-owned restaurants and lodges which feature their beverages.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place

The Art of Fermentation

Join the Wizard of fermentation, Sandor Ellix Katz, for a Hands-on workshop in Patagonia, Arizona. Learn the basics of food & beverage fermentation from best-selling author, Sandor Ellix Katz.

Learn how to make the delicious & nutritious fermented corn drink of the Tarahumara, tesquino; Learn how heritage crops from the Native Seeds/SEARCH Farm & the Nabhan Orchard can be fermented in your own kitchen.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Essays for Hope and Reflection Family, Community & Place Food Heritage and History

World Food Day: A Franciscan Prayer Service on Behalf of Farmers, Farmworkers & Fishers in a Year of Drought & Immigration Debate

Let us remember the words of Saint James: “The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of Our Creator, Our Lord of Hosts” (5:4).

During this season of harvest, in the year in North American history when 71 percent of our rural communities saw their crop seeds and livestock breeds damaged by drought, let us call all cultures, faiths and nations together to celebrate that which the earth did yield, and to ask for repentance for the elements of climate change, water scarcity and damage to the soil that our own actions as eaters and consumers have triggered.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Restoration Economy

Historic Food Market Gets Torched in Syria’s Civil War

Thirty thousand people have died in Syria’s civil war—and the killing is only intensifying. Obviously, human beings are any war’s most appalling casualties, but there are cultural conflagrations that matter, too—vital spaces laid waste, lost forever. Few alive today have experienced the reputed grandeur of old Warsaw, leveled by Nazi bombs in World War II. How would the celebrated Aztec city of Tenochtitlán have weathered the centuries?

We’ll never know, because the Spanish flattened it in the process of conquest, building over it what we now know as Mexico City.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Audiocasts Family, Community & Place Food Heritage and History Redesigning Food Systems Restoration Economy Videos & Audio

Food Justice: An Interview With Gary Nabhan About Borderland Foods

One of the founders of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University is out with a new study on borderland foods. Gary Nabhan – now with the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona – has just published a study about the geopolitical disparity along the U.S./Mexico border in terms of poverty and food supply. He told KNAU’s Gillian Ferris Kohl that more than a dozen researchers went into the field on both sides of the border to look at this schism.

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

Financing Food and Creating Jobs from the Bottom Up

In the days between the 2012 Republican and Democratic Conventions, a group of eighty farmers, ranchers, grocers, produce distributors and food activists met in Carbondale, Colorado. They hunkered down in a big tent on a farm nestled below the drought-stricken peaks of the Rocky Mountains as dry winds gusted around them.

Like many who spoke at the conventions, their goal was to discuss how to create jobs and help rural economies ravaged by the economic downturn get some rebound.

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

Genetic Variation and Distribution of Pacific Crabapple

Pacific crabapple [Malus fusca (Raf.) C.K. Schneid.] is found in mesic coastal habitats in Pacific northwestern North America. It is one of four apple species native to North America. M. fusca is culturally important to First Nations of the region who value and use the fruit of this species as food, bark and leaves for medicine, and wood for making tools and in construction.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History

Slow Money movement aims to bring cash down to earth

Slow Money brought its “We must bring money back to earth” message to Colorado Saturday. In collaboration with the Sustainable Settings ranch of Carbondale, Slow Money hosted the Rocky Mountain Regional Gathering, a day of community organizing and panel discussions, followed by a harvest festival at Sustainable Settings. Participants, myself included, left inspired to build and support vibrant food businesses using Slow Money tools and ideas.

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

A Meal Without a Mexican? Your Food Has Already Migrated!

Not even a decade has passed since Sergio Arau filmed A Day Without a Mexican, but 2012 may go down in history as the Year of No Meals Without a Mexican because of labor shortages in American fields and orchards. Since mid-year, there have been a growing number of state and nation-wide reports indicating that hand-picked vegetables and fruits produced in the United States will be unusually scarce this year.

This is not merely because of widespread drought but also because of a paucity of Mexican-born farm laborers remaining in the U.S. Earlier this season, the American Farm Bureau Federation predicted a $5 to 9 billion dollar loss in this year’s harvest of annual vegetable crops requiring hand-picking, largely due to a shortage of farmworkers.

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