Food and farming advocate Gary Paul Nabhan urged West Virginia University students, employees and community members Tuesday (March 2) to try new food varieties and eat off their local soil.
Nabhan spoke about “Renewing America’s Food Traditions” as part of the 2010 David C. Hardesty, Jr. Festival of Ideas.
“Food is the bridge, the currency between people,” Nabhan said.
Nabhan, a research social scientist at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, teaches geography and advises many non-profits including the Renewing America’s Food Traditions collaborative.
Citing examples of apple and bean varieties, Nabhan encouraged those in attendance to help bring back food varieties that are endangered.
“Diversity is linked to food security, which is at risk with all of the economic changes that are happening,” Nabhan said. “There used to be 16,000 types of apples, now there are only 3,500 and 94 percent of those are threatened or endangered.”
Nabhan also encouraged people to purchase foods that are locally grown, or as close to home as possible. He suggested buying from local farmer’s markets and community collaboratives.
And, he charged the nation’s youth with helping in any way they can – whether it be looking for a career in agriculture, becoming a food writer or sharing different food varieties with friends and family.
“Youth will help transition our food system from a vulnerable one addicted to fossil fuel to a resilient one based on solar/carbon-neutral food sheds,” he said.
Nabhan has worked on various literary non-fiction, grassroots conservation and community-based ethnobiology projects. He has been honored with the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a MacArthur “genius” award, a Lannan Literary Award, a Pew Fellowship in Conservation and Environment, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Conservation Biology and a Quivira Coalition award for excellence in science that contributes to “the radical center.”
Nabhan was the fourth scheduled speaker at WVU’s 2010 David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas. The lecture series is scheduled to feature nine events and seven outstanding professionals. The series will continue through April.
The series is supported in part by the David C. Hardesty Jr. Festival of Ideas Endowment, which was established in 2007 by the WVU Foundation, a private, nonprofit corporation that generates, receives and administers private gifts from individuals and organizations for the benefit of WVU.
To listen to excerpts from an interview with previous Festival of Ideas speaker journalist Byron Pitts, go to http://wvutoday.wvu.edu/n/2010/02/09/emmy-award-winning-journalist-pitts-encourages-students-to-dream-big .
To view the complete 2010 Festival of Ideas schedule, visit http://festivalofideas.wvu.edu .
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