Island Press Field Notes

In this series, Gary Paul Nabhan muses on important topics relating to his forthcoming book Food from the Radical Center: Healing Our Land in Communities. In this post, he writes about community engagement.

In this series, Gary Paul Nabhan muses on important topics relating to his forthcoming book Food from the Radical Center: Healing Our Land in Communities. In this post, he writes about farmers markets. 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.

Whether from floods or fires or climate change-induced natural disasters, when roads collapse and interstate commerce grinds to a halt, we all find ourselves vulnerably dependent on the food at hand. 

Gene banks and seed vaults are saving and protecting crop seeds and the genetic diversity within crops, crop races, and some closely related species. There are some 1,700 gene and seed banks in the world with perhaps the most well-known being the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (Norway), but others include the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (Syria), Kew Millenium Seed Bank (UK), Global Crop Diversity Trust (Germany), and National Seed Storage Laboratory (USA). They are capable of storing and protecting many millions of species and crop cultivars.