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 local jobs and livable wages. 

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, yet the crews that run such operations often work long hours with few benefits to counterbalance all the “sweat equity” they invest.

In the Canary Islands last week, I visited a unique strategy unfolding to help these new entrepreneurs gain both skills and markets. In the village of San Bartoleme on the island of Lanzarote, I spent time at Cesar Manrique’s Monument to the Campesino, where the famous architect/community planner built a training center showing foods, crafts, and artisanal products that use the local materials of the island.

At the rear of the training center is a courtyard with a series of rooms facing the central feature where a spiral staircase has been installed into an old stone quarry. Each of the rooms features practitioners of a different artisan craft and a shop that offers their traditional crafts and gifts for sale. Products range from wines and salsas to baskets and metalwork to weavings and sculptures. Visitors of the training center to practice the culinary arts that they see and taste the products that they make. What if every impoverished community in America had such a training and exhibition center to kickstart new jobs with livable wages?

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 urban farms and arable land.

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 cities; for starters, some multi-ethnic urban communities currently suffer high rates of food insecurity, even those they include many "refugees from rural landscapes: who have excellent agricultural and culinary skills. And yet, changing demography and land uses as well as rising land costs make it harder to leverage expansive food production in cities. In 1950, just 64.7 percent of Americans lived in cities, but by 2015, that percentage had surpassed 80 percent. By 2030, it will likely approach 87 percent. We have become an urban species, living in places where it has become harder and harder to grow food. In fact, a third of the world's land surface-especially under abandoned fields, vacant lots, urban gardens, is no longer as nutrient-rich and productive and as it could be. Soil scientists who gathered in 2015 to advise the UN Food and Agricultural Organization were astonished at just how quickly soil macronutrients and microbes are disappearing from the world's soils and how quickly foods grown in those soils are losing their nutritional value. Fortunately, many urban activists are dedicated to making and distributing compost and mulch from urban green waste and replenish the soils in metro areas. (A shout-out to Compost Cats and Tank's Good Stuff for supplying soil amendments to metro Tucson through over six dozen outlets accessible to land restoration and urban gardening practitioners!) But their work does not stop with the soil. Free seed libraries in dozens of metro areas in the U.S. and Canada are helping urban residents in all income brackets re-diversify their food supplies, growing over two thousand foods crop varieties in metro Tucson alone!

My point is this: We urgently need to invest in the restoration of food-producing landscapes in our cities. Why? Not only because of the healthy foods they can produce, but also because of the way they reduce the "urban heat island effect" and slow climate change. The right to grow your own food is not a right restricted to rural dwellers; more than ever before urban Americans are reaffirming this basic human right! 

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.

As of late August, 2018, the USDA has recorded a total of 8730 farmers markets in the U.S., roughly a fivefold 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 dashiki dress selling organic chile seedlings…. Or what I've seen in Flagstaff Arizona—an immigrant farmer born in Greece selling purslane or "verdolagas" to a Navajo sheepherder or a Mexican-born tortilla maker. We see all races, faiths, genders, and political persuasions not only represented at farmers markets; we see them interacting, learning from one another, and forging long-lasting friendships. I saw for my own eyes how farmers market vendors come together in the face of adversity after Hurricanes Rita and Katrina devastated the growers who sold their fare at the Crescent City Farmers Market in New Orleans. Naw'lins "native" African-Americans, Central Americans, Cajuns, Crackers and Caribbean immigrants were among those who helped one another get back on track and survive through the post-traumatic stress of it all. Our need for a heathier food system brings many of us together. But it also gives us something to celebrate with. As Slow Food's Carlo Petrini once admonished Americans to do, "Don't think of conservation as a hands-off, lock-the-populace-out activity; enjoy the sensory pleasures derived from the success of your own collective labors."

Join me in celebrating the many voices that are rediversifying the American Farmlands and tables while at the same time democratizing society with "a conservation you can taste." The stories of farmers, fishers, fruit gleaners, ranchers, restorationists and chefs are told in the newly-released Island Press book, Food from the Radical Center.      

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 local jobs and livable wages.

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 time in the last century. The number of cultivated food plant varieties in the US has more than doubled in the last thirty years, growing from 9,720 in the mid-1980s to 21,640 by the mid-2010s. We also have many more nonprofits and small companies distributing heirloom plants, up from 375 nursery and seed outlets three decades ago to more than 500 today. Most of these initiatives have not been spear-headed by government programs, foundations or universities, but by grassroots alliance of ‘aficionados”—that is, by the collective good will of individuals who see such work as their passion and (spiritual) vocation, over and above meeting the demands of their profession.

So let us now praise the many bottom-up alliances that make our food system healthy and diverse: the National Association of Conservation Districts; Slow Food; the Seed Savers Exchange; American Livestock Conservancy;  North American Fruit Explorers; Garden Clubs of America; Wild Farm Alliance; Chefs Collaborative; Food Tank; Quail Forever; California Rare Fruit Growers; Ducks Unlimited; Tilth; MOFGA; Eco-Farm; Bioneers; Southern Seed Legacy; Quivira Coalition; Edible Communities; Guerilla Grafters; Desert Harvesters; and many more. These alliances and annual gatherings keep the plants, animals, and microbes essential to the health of our food system, our lands, our communities and our bodies alive and kicking!    

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.

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 of us is that every time I have engaged with neighbors in such efforts, we grow deeper bonds between and among us. It is as if we are inoculated with some cultural form of antibodies or beneficial microbes that then help us fend off any potential assaults on our neighborhood or shared landscape from the outside. A few years back, Manda Webb, Caleb Weaver and I gathered dozens of people together to plant hedgerow after hedgerow on the edges of private orchards, community gardens, student gardens and pastures. The gratitude from our neighbors who received the pollinator-attracting trees, shrubs and wildflowers was immense, but so was the reservoir of good will that welled-up among all who offered their hands for this work. The word "communion" should not be restricted to the act of eating bread and wine together at a common table. It should be extended to our collective efforts to grow the grain and grapes and other crops needed for our common tables…to bring the old and infirm or marginalized together with us for the feasts of gratitude. Nothing much can happen in our communities over the long haul is we do not partake in the daily or monthly actions of taking care of one another and building common trust. Without it, the trees and vines will wither and die, the check dams will tumble down. Long-term landscape restoration cannot proceed without long-term confidence-building and collective actions among those of us who live in the same community and watershed. One reinforces the other.

A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society. The Island Press Urban Resilience Project, Supported By The Kresge Foundation And The JPB Foundation, Is Committed To A Greener, Fairer Future.​ This Op-Ed Was Originally Published November 30, 2018 In Civil Eats.

These are tough times for soybean farmers. As President Trump’s trade war with China drags on, retaliatory tariffs are clobbering soybean prices—and some farmers are selling their crops at a loss.

The federal government has stepped up to help: At the urging of Midwestern senators, the USDA is compensating farmers for some of their losses, shelling out $3.6 billion to soybean farmers so far. While the subsidy is appreciated, many soy farmers I’ve talked to see it as a politically motivated handout that won’t help them in the long run. They would rather work toward lasting solutions than accept a quick fix.

So, here’s a proposal. Instead of simply compensating farmers for their losses, let’s pay them to plant native perennials on land taken out of soy production. If we do that for a decade or more, we can help restore lifesaving habitat for monarch butterflies and bumblebees—saving these critical species from extinction, and protecting the future of American agriculture.

Pollinators are in deep trouble: some bumblebees have been listed as endangered species; the majestic monarchs, which have declined more than 80 percent in the last two decades, are likely to be listed next year. Pollinators are essential to the web of life—and to three fourths of all crops grown in the U.S. Their loss would be devastating for many American farmers. Moreover, if the monarchs are listed as threatened—a determination that must be made in 2019 — farmers will have to cope with tight regulatory constraints on how they grow their crops and use their land.

Habitat loss is a major cause of the pollinators’ decline. In part, that’s because millions of acres that were once part of the USDA’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the federal program that pays farmers to set farmland aside, have been put back into corn cultivation over the last decade because farmers can get bigger subsidies for ethanol production.

Other habitat is threatened by commonly used agrichemicals. A recent report by the Center for Biological Diversity suggests that 9 million acres of monarch and bee habitats could be damaged by the off-target movement of the herbicide dicamba. Chemicals like dicamba and glyphosate kill native milkweed, which feeds monarch caterpillars.  We need 1.5 billion new milkweed sprouts to stave off further monarch declines.

The good news is that farmers are aware of the problem—and many are willing to help. In the 2016 Iowa Farm and Rural Life Poll, 81 percent of the farmers surveyed said they were aware of monarch declines, and 65 percent were concerned about them. A majority of the farmers said they would like to learn how to improve monarch and pollinator habitat on and near their land.

That’s not just idle talk. Since 2008, the Xerces Society has trained more than 120,000 farm professionals in pollinator habitat conservation and restoration; many more have participated in workshops facilitated by the federal government, universities and non-profits. According to Mace Vaughan of Xerces, those efforts have helped restore more than a half million acres of wildflower-rich habitat on working farms across the U.S.

The current trade crisis offers an opportunity to greatly expand these efforts. Given the falling price of soybeans, we could see 6.7 million fewer acres planted in soynext spring.  While many farmers will switch to corn, cotton, or another crop, some of that acreage may remain fallow due to the high transition costs of planting other crops. If even a portion of that land was restored as habitat, we might be able to save pollinators from extinction.

The 2016 Iowa farm survey revealed that a quarter of the farmers were on board to plant as much as 4.8 acres with native plants each, if they could receive full reimbursements for planting and maintaining pollinator habitats. Extrapolated out to just a quarter of all of the 300,000 current soybean farmers in our country, that would suggest that more than 360,000 acres of pollinator habitat could have been voluntarily planted even before the tariff wars began.

Imagine that the current incentives (CRP funds, National Fish and Wildlife Federation grants, and Monarch Collaborative grants and contracts) support farmers to ramp up the plantings to 360,000 acres of additional pollinator habitat for each of the next five years, supporting 900 million additional monarchs in new milkweed-rich pollinator habitat.

But we don’t need to stop there. To save the monarchs—and prevent their listing as an endangered species—we’ll need as many as 1.8 billion additional stems of milkweed plants in North America, according to a recently published U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study. Scientists with the USGS found that a total of 3.6 billion milkweed stems are needed in the landscape to reestablish a stable monarch population, but only 1.34 billion stems remain in the U.S.

Next year, farmers are expected to plant 82.5 million acres in soy, down from 89.1 in 2018—a decline of 6.6 million acres. If they plant 500 milkweed stems on just over half of those acres—3.6 million—we’d have the needed 1.8 billion milkweed stems to assure a viable monarch reproduction and successful migration.

Since soy farmers say they don’t just want a handout, let them get paid for bringing back pollinators instead. Soy farmers received a substantial cash infusion from taxpayers to ease their suffering from the tariff wars. And that was on the heels of U.S. farm policies that facilitated 17 straight years of growth in sales of soy to China.  That two-decade surge in the proliferation of herbicide-resistant soy came at the expense of much needed pollinator habitat in the Midwest, and in particular, at the cost of imperiled monarchs.

It’s time for the 300,000 soy farmers in the U.S. to sing for their supper. I  propose that bean farmers given cash infusions be mandated to put a percentage of acres formerly reserved for soy into pollinator habitat, using funds from NFWF, NCRS, the Monarch Collaborative, and industry to support monarch and bee recovery over the next five years.  The percentage should be calculated to ensure adequate habitat for the monarchs and other pollinators.

Today, farmers and pollinators are both in trouble. By diverting a portion of farm subsidies and wildlife conservation funds to support monarch habitat restoration, we can ease the financial strain on soybean farmers, while saving the pollinators on which we all depend.

This opinion piece was originally published February 20, 2019 on The Revelator. 

President Trump has declared a national emergency to fund a wall along our nation’s southern border. The border wall issue has bitterly divided people across the United States, becoming a vivid symbol of political deadlock.

But for many of us who actually live along the U.S.-Mexico border, the wall is simply beside the point. We know that a wall can’t fix the problems that straddle the boundary between our nations; nor will it build on our shared strengths. So a group of us — ranchers, farmers, conservationists, chefs, carpenters, small business owners and public-health professionals from both sides of the border — have come up with a better idea. We call it the Mesquite Manifesto.

Our plan would tackle the root causes of problems that affect border communities on both sides. While the media have fixated on the difficult conditions in Mexico (and other Central American nations) that propel immigrants northward, there are real problems on the U.S. side too. The poverty rate in this region is twice as high as for the nation as a whole, and joblessness drives many into the lucrative drug trade. Poor diets and inadequate healthcare contribute to high rates of disease: Nearly one-third of those who live along the border suffer from diabetes. And a rapidly growing population, along with rising demand from industry and agriculture, is stressing the region’s limited water supply — a problem made worse by the changing climate.

To address these problems and build a sustainable future for the region as a whole, we look to mesquite, the iconic native tree that grows in every county and municipio along the border. Its gnarly branches have provided food, fuel, medicine, shade and shelter to indigenous communities in the borderlands for more than eight millennia.

Deep-rooted mesquite trees such as velvet mesquite (Prosopis velutina) and honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) are remarkably drought-resistant, anchoring the arid desert land and fixing nitrogen to improve the soil. Their seeds contain more protein than soybeans and can be milled to make flour with a low glycemic index, which helps regulate blood sugar.

It’s no wonder that mesquite long sustained indigenous communities in this fragile land. What is remarkable is that mesquite is seen as a nuisance tree by many who live here now. Indeed there’s scientific consensus that mesquites are among the most “under-managed” resources on our continent, though they cover nearly 200 million acres of arid and semi-arid lands in Mexico and the United States.

Continue reading "Build a Border Wall? Here's a Better Idea" here...