Gary Nabhan

Coalition Receives Grant to Promote Arid-Adapted Heritage Grains in Southern Arizona

A ground-breaking collaboration of farmers and organizations in southern Arizona has been awarded a two-year, $50,000 grant by the Western SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) program to revive the production, milling, distribution, and marketing of the oldest extant grain varieties adapted to the arid Southwest: White Sonora soft bread wheat and Chapalote flint corn.

Native Seeds/SEARCH, the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona, Hayden Flour Mills, Santa Cruz Valley Heritage Alliance, Cultivate Santa Cruz, Tubac Historical Society, Amado Farms Joint Venture, and Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage will work…

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History

The Return of the Natives: Designing and Planting Hedgerows for Pollinator Habitat to Bring Wild Diversity Back to Farms and Gardens

Native pollinators, it seems, were once forgotten as playing an essential role in providing ecological services for food security, but no longer. We have witnessed a surge in grassroots interest in returning pollinators to their proper place in sustainable agriculture, as witnessed by the enthusiastic participation recently seen at a workshop regarding on-farm pollinator habitat restoration in the U.S./Mexico borderlands.

The workshop featured practical teachings from Sam Earnshaw of Community Alliance of Family Farmers, who has helped plant or restore over 300 miles of pollinator-attracting hedgerows in Western states.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History Restoration Economy

A Brief History of Cross-Border Food Trade

Many U.S. residents are amazed to learn that three-fifths of the fresh produce eaten in the U.S. comes from the West Coast of Mexico, and that much of the saltwater fish and shrimp they eat may come from Mexico’s reaches of the Gulf of Mexico, Pacific Ocean and Gulf of California. However, we should not belittle New Yorkers or Minnesotans for this lack of knowledge, since few of us who live much closer to U.S./Mexico border have an accurate sense of how much of our food comes from “el otro lado”—the lands and waters on the other side.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History Redesigning Food Systems

‘Seed schools’ can help nurture local heirloom plants

A novel approach toward helping young people ensure biodiversity in our world is studying seeds in the wild and planting them for food in the garden. Called “seed schools,” they should be in schools everywhere.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Blog Collaborative Conservation Essays for Hope and Reflection Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History

Going with the Grain, Occupying Our Food Supply

As someone who grows nearly a dozen acres of heritage grains in the desert—including the oldest corn and oldest wheat varieties in North America– I recently learned a fact about cereal commodity trading that knocked me off my feet. The most powerful transnational corporation you’ve never heard of—Glencore International PLC, the world’s largest diversified commodities trader—currently controls one tenth of the world’s wheat supply, and one quarter of the global harvest of barley, sunflower and rapeseed.

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

Bookshelf – NYTimes

All roads lead to Rome, but chief among them was the Via Appia, a storied path from the capital to the heel of Italy traveled by everyone from Cicero to Monty Python. Robert A. Kaster traces their footsteps in ‘‘The Appian Way’’. In ‘‘Desert Terroir’’ (University of Texas Press, $25), Gary Paul Nabhan forages in the borderlands, where he connects dishes like capirotada, a Mexican bread pudding, to the Levantine cuisine of his Arab ancestors.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place Farming Innovations Food Heritage and History

The Food Movement Speaks With one Voice: Occupy our Food Supply

On February 27, an unprecedented alliance of more than 60 Occupy groups and 30 environmental, food and corporate accountability organizations have joined together for Occupy our Food Supply, a global day of action resisting the corporate control of food systems.

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

Desert Terroir, Exploring the Unique Flavors and Sundry Places of the Borderlands

Why does food taste better when you know where it comes from? Because history—ecological, cultural, even personal—flavors every bite we eat. Whether it’s the volatile chemical compounds that a plant absorbs from the soil or the stories and memories of places that are evoked by taste, layers of flavor await those willing to delve into the roots of real food. In this landmark book, Gary Paul Nabhan takes us on a personal trip into the southwestern borderlands to discover the terroir—the “taste of the place”—that makes this desert so delicious.

By Gary Nabhan Articles Collaborative Conservation Family, Community & Place

SRP, Phoenix neighborhood find palm-tree solution

Salt River Project has mostly resolved the conflict in an east Phoenix neighborhood where rare black-sphinx date palms growing close to power lines threaten to cause fires or blackouts. A year ago, SRP offered several residents in the Mountgrove subdivision in the Arcadia area $100 each to remove their trees, but many balked because they prize the heirloom date palms, which are not found in a grove anywhere else.

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