Where Our Food Comes from

by Nabhan, Gary Paul; Wilson, Ken

• ISBN13: 9781610910033
• ISBN10: 1610910036
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-03-16
• Publisher: Island Pr

Summary

The future of our food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the country's famines, Vavilov had traveled over five continents, collecting hundreds of thousands of seeds in an effort to outline the ancient centers of agricultural diversity and guard against widespread hunger. Now, another remarkable scientist--and vivid storyteller--has retraced his footsteps. In Where Our Food Comes From, Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together Vavilov's extraordinary story with his own expeditions to Earth's richest agricultural landscapes and the cultures that tend them. Retracing Vavilov's path from Mexico and the Colombian Amazon to the glaciers of the Pamirs in Tajikistan, he draws a vibrant portrait of changes that have occurred since Vavilov's time and why they matter. In his travels, Nabhan shows how climate change, free trade policies, genetic engineering, and loss of traditional knowledge are threatening our food supply. Through discussions with local farmers, visits to local outdoor markets, and comparison of his own observations in eleven countries to those recorded in Vavilov's journals and photos, Nabhan reveals just how much diversity has already been lost. But he also shows what resilient farmers and scientists in many regions are doing to save the remaining living riches of our world. It is a cruel irony that Vavilov, a man who spent his life working to foster nutrition, ultimately died from lack of it. In telling his story, Where Our Food Comes Frombrings to life the intricate relationships among culture, politics, the land, and the future of the world's food.

Author Biography

Gary Paul Nabhan is a plant hunter, ethnobiologist, conservationist, and orchard-keeper whose work has been translated into six languages. Author of Why Some Like It Hot and Coming Home to Eat, he has been honored with the Vavilov Medal, a MacArthur Genius fellowship, and as a pioneer of the local food movement by Time magazine. A research scientist at the University of Arizona, he raises heritage fruit trees and heirloom chiles in Patagonia, Arizona. See www.garynabhan.com for his upcoming lectures and workshops.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. xi
The Art Museum and the Seed Bank	p. 1
The Hunger Artist and the Horn of Plenty	p. 22
Melting Glaciers and Waves of Grain: The Pamirs	p. 45
Drought and the Decline of Variety: The Po Valley	p. 65
From Breadbasket to Basket Case: The Levant	p. 74
Date Palm Oases and Desert Crops: The Maghreb	p. 84
Finding Food in Famine's Wake: Ethiopia	p. 93
Apples and Boomtown Growth: Kazakhstan	p. 113
Rediscovering America and Surviving the Dust Bowl: The U.S. Southwest	p. 125
Logged Forests and Lost Seeds: The Sierra Madre	p. 139
Deep into the Tropical Forests of the Amazon	p. 162
The Last Expedition	p. 175
Epilogue	p. 191
Bibliography	p. 199
Acknowledgments	p. 211
About the Author	p. 213
Index	p. 215
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