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Tapping Into the Wisdom of Traditional Farmers: Sustainably Growing Food in the Face of Climate Change and Water Scarcity

November 19, 2013 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm

Gary Paul Nabhan
W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable
Food Systems, University of Arizona
Over the next half century, climate change will dramatically affect which food crop varieties reach optimum quality innearly every foodscape in  North America. Farmers’ selection of crop varieties and how they grow them in each microclimate will be radically reworked by declining chill hours, extreme summer temperatures, the changed frequency of tropical storms, and extended droughts. Fresh water scarcity and increasing  salinity will also rework what food plants can be grown in many localities as well, not just in already arid areas, but along all coasts. With 2300 counties declared drought disaster areas in the US within the last two years, it is time that horticulturists, gardeners, and farmers in every part of the country look more critically at the diversity of some heirloom vegetables, fruits and grains, a well as new farmer-selected varieties derived from participatory plant breeding in the U.S. By listening to traditional and innovative farmers on five continents and seeing how they are  adapting their diversity of food crops to adaptations, Nabhan offers options to greater reliance on a few so-called climate ready GE crops, each of which costs to 5 million US dollars to develop, market and employ. The farm-based strategies for innovation developed through biomimicry, ecomimicry and etnomimicry will be highlighted.
Gary Paul Nabhan is the W.K. Kellogg Endowed Chair in Sustainable Food Systems at the University of Arizona, as well as the permaculture designer and orchard-keeper of Almuniya de los Zopilotes Experimental Farm in Patagonia, Arizona. Widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the  local-food movement and grassroots seed conservation, Nabhan was honored by Utne Reader in 2011 as one of twelve people making the world a better place to live. A recipient of a MacArthur Genius Award, his twenty-four books have been translated into six languages.

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Sponsored by the Anthropology and Biology Departments, the Environmental Studies Program, the Agriculture Food and Environment Program at the Friedman School of Nutrition, and Tufts Institute of the Environment

Details

Date:
November 19, 2013
Time:
5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Event Category:

Venue

Tufts University, Biology Department, Barnum Hall Rm 008
163 Packard Avenue
Medford, MA 02155 United States

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