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Gary Nabhan, the Gulf and the Power of Positive Eating
By:
Crashing Vor
Published: July 16, 2010
Gary Paul Nabhan is a man of many hats. Geographer, ethnobiologist, conservationist, storyteller. That he won the MacArthur "genius" award should come as no surprise, as he has consistently uses his varied interests to find the profound truths hiding in the intersections between seemingly unrelated fields.
His 2002 book Coming Home to Eat , about a year spent eating only what could be found within a 250-mile range of his Arizona home, helped energize the locavore movement. Other books include works on traditions in salmon-fishing cultures, the anthropology of spicy foods and a natural history of tequila. "Genius," indeed.
In 2003-2004, he founded Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT) , an alliance of food, farming, environmental and culinary advocates striving to restore endangered culinary traditions and cultures and promote healthy and sustainable food production.
Following the hurricanes of 2005, RAFT brought together food advocates, ecologists, historians and chefs from across the Gulf Coast to inventory the bounty of comestibles and cultures it has nurtured. The ambitious project was well under way when BP's Macondo well blew out, spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Nabhan shifted gears and amended the inventory to identify species threatened by the oil crisis. The list, published along with essays and photos by other RAFTers, is entitled "At Risk in the Gulf Coast." (A pdf of the at-risk species can be found here .)
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Louisiana Eat-In will feature local seafood and work of Gary Nabhan
By:
Brett Anderson, The Times-Picayune
Published: July 15, 2010
A central question the Gulf of Mexico oil spill has shoved into conversations across Louisiana and beyond is one many locals have been asking since the last disaster struck the region five years ago: What do we stand to lose?
As it happens, the question is one the Arizona-based conservation scientist Gary Paul Nabhan has been devoting much of his professional life to answering, specifically as it applies to the country's food cultures. On Thursday at the Crescent City Farmers Market, locals will get a chance to see how Nabhan's work is relevant to south Louisiana, particularly now.
The event is called "A Louisiana Eat In," which organizer Poppy Tooker, the local radio personality and food authority, envisions as a fun excuse to demonstrate that seafood harvested from the embattled Gulf is, contrary to what an apparently increasing percentage of the population believes, healthy. Chris Lusk of Cafe Adelaide, Stephen Stryjewski of Cochon and Jay Nix of Parkway Bakery & Tavern will all be serving dishes made with Louisiana seafood.
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Restoring the Bishops Garden with Lamys Diversity of Forgotten Fruits
By:
Gary Nabhan
Published: June 17, 2010
I would like to offer some reflections regarding a neglected legacy of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe: the horticultural legacy of Archbishop Lamy on behalf of the poor and hungry in northern New Mexico. And I would like to suggest that it would be a very Franciscan gesture to not only restore but to revitalize that legacy to its rightful place on the grounds of this Basilica—a National Historical Landmark known as Lamy's Garden. And so, my comments will be brief today, but they include a proposal—if not a challenge—to the Archdiocese. The proposal is to use this year of celebration to conserve Lamy's nearly-forgotten fruit trees that remain scattered around northern New Mexico, and to return them to the grounds of this sacred place, in keeping with that quintessential Franciscan value of caring for both people and the many other diverse forms of life on this planet.
Briefly, I would like to note that my passion and compassion for Archbioshop's Lamy's forgotten fruits comes from two sources: my spiritual vocation as a Secular Franciscan lay brother, dedicated to St. Francis of Assisi's vision of making a better world for the poorest of our human AND non-human neighbors; and my professional work as a farmer, agricultural historian and conservationist through the Renewing America's Food Traditions alliance and the Sabores Sin Fronteras Farming and Foodways Alliance. From years of involvement in each of these kinds of work, I have gained tremendous appreciation for Archbishop Lamy's vision and daily practice. To put it more precisely, I am humbled by the fact that his spirituality was earthly enough to help feed the poor and beautify this city through his talent in making horticultural introductions to benefit his community.
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Oil spill threatens to smother Gulf Coast food cultures
By:
Gary Nabhan
Published: June 10, 2010
With more than 20 million gallons of oil already let loose in the Gulf of Mexico, fishermen, gator hunters and even farmers are waking up to the fact that the diversity of foods they depend upon for their livelihoods is imperiled. This month, the Renewing America's Food Traditions (RAFT) alliance will release a comprehensive checklist of over 240 place-based foods of the Gulf Coast that are now at risk -- 138 of them directly affected by the oil spill.
In particular, of some 136 species or stocks of fish and shellfish from the Gulf that have been historically featured in regional seafood markets and restaurants, 125 are projected to have been directly impacted by oil contamination. Because Gulf Coast communities harvest well over half of all oysters eaten in the U.S., as well as generate much of the wild-caught shrimp, grouper, redfish, and crawfish produced in North America, the oil spill is likely to diminish the overall diversity in the American food system.
Unfortunately, this crisis is not just an environmental one, but a food justice one. The spill is economically devastating to some of the most marginalized ethnic communities in the United States, including Cajun, Houma Indian, "Creole" Black, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Latino communities in and near the Mississippi delta. And while most U.S. agencies and media have sidestepped this issue, Cuban and Mexican fishermen are just likely as Gulf Coast residents to be have their livelihoods disrupted by the oil spill.
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“Eat What You Want to Conserve” Says Arab-American Writer Gary Nabhan
Posts By:
Green Prophet Guest
Published: June 4, 2010
Since the beginning of the green movement, there has been a rise in the number of organizations and businesses that are doing their part in the promotion of sustainability through conservation.
This past Earth Day brought about the Earth Day Network, which has been playing its part to bring conservationist and green enthusiasts together, sharing ideas and discussing new ways to support the planet.
Other large organizations NGOS like Doug Band and the CGI (Clinton Global Initiative) have been working on successful emission reduction projects in the San Francisco Bay area.
All the while, the climate is continuing to worsen, and individual, as well as collaborative acts, are important for any successful green campaign. As human beings, we're constantly told to reduce our carbon footprint, consume less unhealthy foods, and spend less time in the shower!
But let's take a minute to step back and look at this from a different perspective; one that the Arab-American writer and conservationist Gary Nabhan strongly suggests.
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Saving the planet means more pleasure, says ecologist Gary Nabhan
By:
IPS, part of the Guardian Environment Network
Published: May 25, 2010
Saving the planet from environmental catastrophe is undoubtedly very important, but one of the reasons many people are not doing their bit could be that being green does not seem much fun.
Activists frequently tell us, with good reason, that things such as driving cars, eating red meat and jetting off overseas on holiday should be cut down or eliminated because of their hefty carbon footprints.
But influential United States-based writer and biologist Gary Nabhan has some refreshing news: conservation is not just good for the planet, it can be immensely pleasurable too, above all for the palate.
Nabhan says people have the power to help reverse the agricultural biodiversity loss that is putting our food supplies in peril in a simple way - by tucking into the rich variety of goodies nature provides.
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Saving the Planet Can Be Fun
By:
IPSnews.net - Paul Virgo
Published: May 23, 2010
ROME - Saving the planet from environmental catastrophe is undoubtedly very important, but one of the reasons many people are not doing their bit could be that being green does not seem much fun.
Activists frequently tell us, with good reason, that things such as driving cars, eating red meat and jetting off overseas on holiday should be cut down or eliminated because of their hefty carbon footprints.
But influential United States-based writer and biologist Gary Nabhan has some refreshing news: conservation is not just good for the planet, it can be immensely pleasurable too, above all for the palate.
Nabhan says people have the power to help reverse the agricultural biodiversity loss that is putting our food supplies in peril in a simple way - by tucking into the rich variety of goodies nature provides.
"In other environmental issues we tell people to stop something, reduce their impact, reduce their damage," Nabhan told IPS at this week's Rome festival celebrating biodiversity, organised by the Bioversity International research institute.
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The Whiskey Island Fish Pepper Project
By:
Scott Carlson
Published: Urbanite #71 May 10
On a cold and wet October day, Mick Kipp and I went to One Straw Farm to see a bit of Maryland's heritage ripening in the ground. Kipp drove his truck up the muddy road between the fields and stopped at a row of low bushes with odd green-and-white leaves. The multicolored fruits hanging off them looked like Christmas lights, but with white stripes. When I picked one and bit into it, I first tasted a tangy sweetness followed by a potent heat in the back of my throat.
These were fish peppers, a striking-looking hot pepper that was once famous in this region but is now very rare—almost lost, in fact. But Kipp, who is known around town for the line of spice blends and rubs he sells at his Whiskey Island Pirate Shop ( www.whiskeyisland.com ) inside the Mill Valley General Store in Remington, hopes this modest row of about thirty plants represents the vanguard of a fish pepper comeback. He sees a day when farmers' markets sell bushels of peppers and restaurateurs cook dishes laced with the fiery fruits. He's planning a line of fish pepper dusts and sauces, and he's formed a partnership with One Straw Farm, an organic farm in White Hall, to pull this off. “This is a two- to five-year project,” he says, “to see if we could grow enough peppers so that we could seed them, offer them fresh, offer them for drying and sauces, and make them available to the community.”
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2010 Arizona Book Award Winners Announced
By:
Arizona Book Publishing Association
Published: May 2, 2010
The Arizona Book Publishing Association is pleased to announce the 2010 Arizona Book Award Winners. The winners received their Glyph Awards at a gala banquet at Phoenix Country Club on May 1, 2010.
The Embodying Arizona and the Best Book Glyph Award Winners were revealed that night. Congratulations to all the winners, as well as to the many fine entries named as finalists.
Gary Nabhan won in Agriculture/Gardening:
Heritage Farming in the Southwest -
Western National Parks Association.
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Desert oases as genetic refugia of heritage crops: Persistence of forgotten fruits in the mission orchards of Baja California, Mexico
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan, Jesus Garcia, Rafael Routson, Kanin Routson and Micheline Cariño-Olvera
Published: April, 2010
The first introductions of agricultural crops to desert oases of Baja California, Mexico were initiated by Jesuit missionaries between 1697 and 1768 and historic records from these Jesuits provided a detailed benchmark by which temporal changes in agro-biodiversity can be measured.
Longitudinal studies at the agricultural oases on the Baja California peninsula of Mexico can help determine whether such isolated “islands” of cultivation function as refugia or de facto reserves for in situ conservation of eighteen perennial species introduced by Jesuits. We compared survivorship of these historically introduced perennials at nine oases and determined that at least fifteen of the original eighteen Mission-era introductions of perennial species persist at these Baja California oases and one additional species persists on the peninsula outside of its original historic context.
Despite this level of overall persistence, no species is cultivated in all nine oases. The archipelago of cultivated oases in Baja California should be considered as an aggregate worthy of conservation investments, rather than assuming that any single oasis is sufficient to maintain all historic varieties in the future.
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Gary Nabhan remembers Stewart Udall
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan
Published: March 29, 2010
On Saturday, March 20, the West lost Stewart Udall, one of the greatest conservationists this region has given to the world. The man exemplified vision and decency, conservation and consilience, in an era when conflict and entrenchment have become all too common.
As Congress fought bitterly over health care reform that same weekend, voting almost entirely upon party lines, I remembered a story that Udall told me as we celebrated his 80th birthday at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nev., in 2000. I had asked him about Barry Goldwater, the great conservative curmudgeonly Republican senator from Arizona, who reigned while Udall was still a young Democratic congressman from the same state. Did he have to cajole Goldwater to vote for conservation measures? His answer -- roughly paraphrased here -- surprised me.
"I never doubted that Barry loved the land. He spent his younger days roaming around, photographing much of the West. We didn't always vote the same way, but we were friends. The entire Arizona delegation to Congress -- both Democrat and Republican -- regularly got together to see what we could get done by collaborating across the aisle. We'd even golf or share martinis together after hours. The deep divide we see in Congress today is a relatively recent phenomenon."
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What’s driving our favorite fruit into decline?
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan
Published: March 9, 2010
You've heard the hackneyed phrase "as American as apple pie." But America is not taking care of the apples -- or the orchard-keepers -- that have nourished us for centuries. In 1900, 20 million apple trees were growing in the U.S.; now, not even a fourth remain in our orchards and gardens. Today, much of the apple juice consumed in the U.S. is produced overseas. Of the apples still grown in America, just one variety -- Red Delicious -- comprises 41 percent of the country's entire crop, and 11 varieties account for 90 percent of all apples sold in stores.
When Joe Twine of Richmond, Ky., was growing up, "It was a must to have an orchard. [My father] had orchards...he had apples come in at all times of the year," he recalls. "You don't see 'em anymore."
Of the 15,000 to 16,000 apple varieties that have been named, grown, and eaten in North American, less than 3,500 remain commercially available. Of the surviving varieties, nine out of ten are currently at risk of falling out of cultivation, and falling off our tables.
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Forgotten Fruits Manual & Manifesto - Apples
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan, Ben Watson
Published: March, 2010
As part of RAFT's 2010 "Forgotten Fruits" initiative, this brochure details the history, decline, nursery practices and local restoration efforts designed to bring back the most endangered heirloom apples to orchards, backyards, farmer's markets, restaurants, and home kitchens across the country.
Download Forgotten Fruits Manual & Manifesto - Apples (PDF - 32 pages, 2.5MB - Published March 2010)
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Ranching to Produce Tacos Sin Carbon: The Low Carbon Foodprint of Grass-fed Beef and Sheep Production in the Semi-Arid West
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan, Duncan Blair, and Dennis Moroney
Published: February, 2010
Should the issues of fossil fuel use, carbon emissions
generated from the food system and their contribution
to global warming influence how ranchers manage
their operations and how they sell their livestock
for beef? Perhaps ranchers who are consistently good
land stewards are doing enough already, so that asking
them take on the issue of what happens to their
livestock once it leaves the ranch may be asking too
much. To paraphrase one wise sage, “Ranching can be
one of the most elegant, simple means of providing
food to the world that exists. The trouble is keeping
it simple.”
While ranchers in the American West once faced
criticism for how they managed public and private
rangelands, they are generally getting more praise
than ever before for their innovative land stewardship
practices. But what has replaced the so-called ‘Range
Wars’ is public anxiety over something else: the effects
of ‘industrial meat production’ on global warming,
and the effects of meat consumption on human
health. Consumers and environmentalists appear
to be preoccupied today with issues such as how far
cattle travel to feedlots, and what they eat once they
leave the range.
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Drought drives Middle Eastern pepper farmers out of business, threatens prized heirloom chiles
By:
Gary Paul Nabhan
Published: January 15, 2010
Most Turks live on the water's edge in the far western reaches of their vast country. But many of the spices that perfume the air in Turkey's famous urban bazaars come from the nation's southeastern farming areas of Sanliurfa and Kahramanmaras. In fact, spices from this region rank among the most highly prized condiments and herbs you can find in any spice emporium anywhere.
As I wandered through the Misir Carsisi Spice Bazaar in Istanbul, and the Kemeralti Bazaar at the western terminus of the Silk Road in Izmir, I could see the chile powders, pastes and dried fruits from Sanliurfa and Kahramanmaras proudly and prominently displayed.
Urfa and Maras peppers from Turkey have the same international fame that Aleppo (Halaby) peppers do from Syria, Tabascos do from Louisiana, or Habaneros do from the Yucatan. But their prices are soaring and supplies are becoming scarce—not merely because of international demand, but because of drought and agricultural water scarcity triggered by global climate change.
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10 tips for living gracefully in the desert
By:
Gary Nabhan Special To The Arizona Daily Star
Published: January 3, 2010
• Each time it rains, follow the flow of water through where you live, and see how it can be encouraged to nurture the most life.
• Find what is edible within a quarter-mile of where you live, track its seasons of edibility, and incorporate it into your diet.
• Make an interspecific peace pact with the wildlife that lives closest to you to "do no harm."
• Reduce your carbon footprint by sun-drying all your clothes as well as all the fruit that you can't immediately eat when it is ripe.
• Talk to the oldest person in your neighborhood to learn what the place used to smell, sound, taste and look like.
• Talk to the youngest people in your neighborhood and ask them what they'd like the place to be like in another 10 to 20 years, then help them achieve your common goals.
• Make a list of major environmental or cultural mistakes made in the Southwest over the last century, and promise not to let history repeat itself.
• Make an artistic monument in a nearby public space to all that has been lost in the Southwest - or your neighborhood - and host a day of grieving and a festival of repentance.
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As American as Apple Pie?
By:
Melinda Burns
Published: November 26, 2009
John Chapman, aka Johnny Appleseed, the pioneer nurseryman, would be turning over in his grave, wherever it is, if he knew how far from the apple tree Americans have strayed.
The barefoot wanderer who carried apple seeds by the bushel from Pennsylvania to the wilderness of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, promoting a vast diversity of apple varieties to help settlers survive on the Western frontier, would not be "happy as can be" to find out that 40 percent of the U.S. crop today is Red Delicious.
Ten other apple varieties such as Gala, Fuji and Golden Delicious largely make up the rest of what's sold in supermarkets. But there was a time in the late 19th century, America's "golden age of apples," when an estimated 6,650 named varieties flourished in "the fruited plain" from coast to coast.
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Rare foods experts visit St. Augustine for pepper
By:
Richard Villadoniga
Published: November 5, 2009
Gary Nabhan, of the Renewing America's Food Traditions Alliance and an award-winning writer on food biodiversity, visited St. Augustine recently to research St. Johns County's datil pepper.
Several years ago. Nabhan first nominated the datil pepper for the Slow Food Ark of Taste, a "Hall of Fame" for rare but flavorful regional foods. Now he and two colleagues are looking at how climate change is affecting food supply, particularly with regard to its impacts on rare, place-based heritage foods.
With the help of Chef Kurt Friese of Iowa City and Kraig Kraft, an agroecologist, Nabhan is touring North America to get a better sense of how culinary traditions are adjusting to changes in the climate and ecosystems.
"We just got back from a trip to northern Mexico, just over the Arizona border. We were looking at a pepper that is harvested there called the chiltepin, which was recently hit by a hurricane that dumped 22 inches of rain in the desert in one day," Nabhan said. "Because it's the only native wild pepper in North America, we've been worried that storms, floods, and even drought are reducing its availability,"
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