Growing Food In A Hotter Drier Land

Download or read book Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land written by Gary Paul Nabhan and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2013-06-14 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How to harvest water and nutrients, select drought-tolerant plants, and create natural diversity Because climatic uncertainty has now become "the new normal," many farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt their food production to become more resilient in the face of such "global weirding." This book draws upon the wisdom and technical knowledge from desert farming traditions all around the world to offer time-tried strategies for: Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils Protecting fields from damaging winds, drought, and floods Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops Delecting fruits, nuts, succulents, and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer, drier climates Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the world's experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands. For this book he has visited indigenous and traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert, the Arabian Peninsula, the Sahara Desert, and Andalusia, as well as the Sonoran, Chihuahuan, and Painted deserts of North America, to learn firsthand their techniques and designs aimed at reducing heat and drought stress on orchards, fields, and dooryard gardens. This practical book also includes colorful "parables from the field" that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward. It is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams of how to implement these desert-adapted practices in your own backyard, orchard, or farm. This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century, and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West, Great Plains, and the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.

Download or read book Fasting and Feasting written by Adam Federman and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2018-09-14 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than 30 years, Patience Gray—author of the celebrated cookbook Honey from a Weed—lived in a remote area of Puglia in southernmost Italy. She lived without electricity, modern plumbing, or a telephone; grew much of her own food; and gathered and ate wild plants alongside her neighbors in this economically impoverished region. She was fond of saying that she wrote only for herself and her friends, yet her growing reputation brought a steady stream of international visitors to her door. This simple and isolated life she chose for herself may help explain her relative obscurity when compared to the other great food writers of her time: M. F. K. Fisher, Elizabeth David, and Julia Child. So it is not surprising that when Gray died in 2005 the BBC described her as an “almost forgotten culinary star.” Yet her influence, particularly among chefs and other food writers, has had a lasting and profound effect on the way we view and celebrate good food and regional cuisines. Gray’s prescience was unrivaled: She wrote about what today we would call the Mediterranean diet and Slow Food—from foraging to eating locally—long before they became part of the cultural mainstream. Imagine if Michael Pollan or Barbara Kingsolver had spent several decades living among Italian, Greek, and Catalan peasants, recording their recipes and the significance of food and food gathering to their way of life. In Fasting and Feasting, biographer Adam Federman tells the remarkable—and until now untold—life story of Patience Gray: from her privileged and intellectual upbringing in England, to her trials as a single mother during World War II, to her career working as a designer, editor, translator, and author, and describing her travels and culinary adventures in later years. A fascinating and spirited woman, Patience Gray was very much a part of her times but very clearly ahead of them.

Download or read book Replenish written by Sandra Postel and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Nothing is more important to life than water, and no one knows water better than Sandra Postel. Replenish is a wise, sobering, but ultimately hopeful book." --Elizabeth Kolbert "Remarkable." --New York Times Book Review "Clear-eyed treatise...Postel makes her case eloquently." --Booklist, starred review "An informative, purposeful argument." --Kirkus We spend billions of dollars on irrigation, dams, sanitation plants, and other feats of engineering to control water for our own prosperity. What if the answer was not control, but replenishment? Sandra Postel takes readers around the world to explore water projects that work with, rather than against, nature's rhythms. Forest rehabilitation is safeguarding drinking water, farmers are planting cover crops to reduce polluted runoff, and "sponge cities" are capturing rainwater to curb urban flooding. Postel argues that efforts like these will be essential as we adjust to a hotter, wilder climate. Will we continue to fight the water cycle, endangering ourselves and the planet, or recognize our place in it and take advantage of the inherent services nature offers?

Download or read book Farming for the Long Haul written by Michael Foley and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farming in the ruins of the twentieth century -- A short, unhappy history of business advice for farmers -- Subsistence first! -- Land for the tiller -- Soil, civilization, and resilient farmers through the centuries -- Resourceful farmers -- Woodlands and wastes -- It takes a village: leisure, community, and resilience -- Getting a living, forging a livelihood -- Farmer, citizen, survivor: politics and resilience

Download or read book Chile, Clove, and Cardamom written by Beth Dooley and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2024-10-31 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explore mouth-watering recipes from the most vibrant and diverse culinary traditions of the hottest and driest places on earth—including the aromatic dishes and arid-adapted traditions from Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the deserts shared by the US and Mexico—compiled by two James Beard Award-winning writers. Chile, Clove, and Cardamom is a celebration of the fragrances and flavors of sun-drenched cuisines. Throughout this book, coauthors Beth Dooley and Gary Paul Nabhan reveal surprising patterns and principles among varied recipes of traditional desert cultures, bringing to life the places, dishes, and recipes that have been shaped by heat and drought and infused with bold flavors. Gary Paul Nabhan, world-renowned ethnobotanist, desert ecologist, and literary naturalist, has written extensively about foods from the Middle East to the desert Southwest and is the winner of the 2024 James Beard Media Award for his recent book Agave Spirit. Joined by fellow James Beard Award–winner (The Sioux Chef, 2018) and food writer Beth Dooley, who has explored both Indigenous and perennial foods, the two have created a unique, stunning collection of over 90 recipes that honor the tastiness of cuisines that have influenced how all of humanity eats today. Steeped in history and memory, Chile, Clove, and Cardamom is also a beautifully photographed, in-depth guide to the essential spice blends that will help you build your own aromatic pantry, drawing on a variety of easy-to-follow cooking methods for planning your own desert meals. Inside, you’ll find: Main Dishes: Sticky Lamb Ribs, Spicy Orange Chicken, Roast Chicken with Tarragon and Capers, Stuffed Mexican Peppers in Yogurt Walnut Sauce, and Lamb Kebabs with Moroccan Spices and Pomegranate Molasses Glaze. Light Fare and Small Plates: Squash Blossom Fritters, Sonoran Flat Enchiladas, and Eggplant Fries with Desert Syrup. Dips and Sauces: Sonoran Tepary Dip, Fire Roasted Eggplant Tahini Dip, Aromatic Red Pepper Sauce, and Fig and Pomegranate Jam. Breads: Pocket Flat Breads, Pan de Semita, and Blue Corn Bread. Soups and Stews: Tunisian Chickpea Stew, White Bean Chili, and Watermelon and Cactus Fruit Gazpacho. Salads: Desert Succotash, Za’atar-Roasted Cauliflower, and Tangerine and Radish Salad. Drinks and Desserts: Pineapple Sotol Margarita, Canary Islands Pastries, and Phyllo Nut Pinwheels. As hotter and drier conditions become more familiar to people beyond the places where these Indigenous and Nomadic cultural cuisines originated, these water-conserving dishes and energy-saving techniques become timely for many of us. Each recipe, in turn, introduces us to the gastronomic legacies that connect these cuisines, offering tips for understanding and sourcing high-quality, delicious ingredients—and how to use them—in a changing world. “If all the world’s most delicious foods had a reunion, this would be their family album.”—Lawrence Downes, writer; former member of the New York Times editorial board

Download or read book Addressing Climate Change at the Community Level in the United States written by Paul R. Lachapelle and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-12 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of community, in all its diverse definitions and manifestations, provides a unique approach to learn more about how groups of individuals and organizations are addressing the challenges posed by climate change. This new volume highlights specific cases of communities developing innovative approaches to climate mitigation and adaptation around the United States. Defining community more comprehensively than just spatial geography to include also communities of interest, identity and practice, this book highlights how individuals and organizations are addressing the challenges posed by climate change through more resilient social processes, government policies and sustainable practices. Through close examinations of community efforts across the United States, including agricultural stakeholder engagement and permaculture projects, coastal communities and prolonged drought areas, and university extension and local governments, this book shows the influence of building individual and institutional capacity toward addressing climate change issues at the community level. It will be useful to community development students, scholars and practitioners learning to respond to unexpected shocks and address chronic stress associated with climate change and its impacts.

Download or read book Our Traumatized Planet written by Mark Q. Sutton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-11 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our Traumatized Planet explores the state of the environment and some of the major issues faced today and asks what we can learn and apply from contemporary traditional peoples, ancient societies, and our own successes and failures. Providing straightforward information on some of the serious environmental issues we face so that non-scientists can understand them, this book explores what is at stake so that we can choose to make a difference. Combining the latest data from environmental, anthropological, and archaeological science allows for fresh perspectives and an empirical approach to describing these problems that eliminates hopeful denial, speculation, wishful thinking, and downright lies. Using archaeological data, the authors provide examples of success and failures in the past that could be used to make decisions about the future. They also highlight examples of how traditional peoples, past and present, have dealt with these same issues. Seeing the current crisis through the eyes of two experienced anthropologists broadens our understanding and allows us to set contemporary issues in the context of the past and traditional knowledge. However, this is not a book of easy solutions from the past to solve our future; rather, it is an impassioned plea to people today to read and understand what state the planet is in and encourage them to find the will to change. This book is for students of archaeology, anthropology, and environmental science and all those wanting to, in a clear and readable way, understand the fate of our planet.