Wednesday at a celebration of mesquite food artisans and book release of Mesquite! on Tucson’s Tumamoc Hill, the Tucson City of Gastronomy non-profit released its publication, Baja Arizona Artisanal Food Products. It features 108 food products from the Tucson basin made accessible and affordable by 52 local food producers who process native plants, honey and heirloom crops into delectable foods and beverages.

The same day, my new book Food from the Radical Center was first publicly presented at the same event, ...

While “local” has become an overused buzzword in many places over the last two decades, “green livelihoods for local residents” remains a goal that many communities aspire to achieve. In southern Arizona along the border with Mexico, many rural communities have all but dried up for lack of jobs offering livable wages. Supporting start-up food microenterprises remains one of the best ways to jumpstart a lagging local economy, and yet the crews which run such operations often work long hours ...

If you think that rural areas are the only places where communities are working on the restoration of food-producing habitats, look again: Many urban farmers and gardeners are endeavoring to “daylight” the arable land and potable water sources buried under the surface of most metropolitan areas. In fact, some of America’s best arable lands and finest rivers run through the urban matrix. There are good reasons that we should not “throw in the towel” regarding the future of agriculture inside ...

During trying times, it seems that all of us need reminders of what still works in and about America, and one phenomena that still reaps benefits for most of us is the panoply of voluntary actions taken by ordinary people like you and me to conserve, restore and enrich to the diversity of foods available to our children, our elders, and ourselves. Because of these efforts, the diversity of foods and beverages on American tables is greater than at any ...

What if each of us – as time and energy allows – tried to take a day each month to work exclusively toward the restoration of our lived-in landscape with our neighbors? What if we went beyond picking up garbage and mending cracked sidewalks, to planting trees, building check dams across downcut gullies, or sowing native grasses and wildflowers along bike paths and railways that have become barren or weedy after years of grading and spraying? All I am sure ...

It is sometimes easy to forget that just a quarter century ago, there were less than 2000 functioning farmers markets in the entire U.S. As of late August, 2018, the USDA has recorded a total of 8730 farmers markets in the U.S., roughly a five-fold increase in less than 25 years. What I love about farmers markets is what I’ve seen in Bloomington, Indiana — an old conservative farmer in overalls selling pawpaws next to a college-age woman in a ...

I’ve been humbled to learn that conservative Republicans throughout the country are not only among the leaders in the recovery of rare standard breeds of domesticated turkeys, but are also essential to the recovery of wild turkey populations and the restoration of their habitats. It tells me two things.

First, that some conservationists dismiss the efforts of those interested in conserving domesticated seeds and breeds because they claim there is no carryover in concern for wild species, which is a false ...

Having spent a lot of time on the ground with people coming together to restore disappearing foods of their regions, there are two particular conversations that have always stood out for me: I remember one old timey apple grower in Appalachia telling me that he loves growing heirloom varieties, but if some of them have no interest among consumers, he has to cull them out of his orchard to make room for varieties that still attract the interest of urban ...