WEBVTT 00:00:16.034 --> 00:00:23.890 - Good evening, I'm Scott Sanders. And I'm grateful to all the people who are doing all of this good work 00:00:23.890 --> 00:00:31.670 - on behalf of our community and the neighborhood and all the creatures that share it with us. When Gary 00:00:31.670 --> 00:00:39.828 - Nabhan was a teenager, late in the war-torn 1960s, he dropped out of high school and went to work repairing 00:00:39.828 --> 00:00:45.342 - railroad tracks near the steel mills of Gary, Indiana, where he grew up. 00:00:46.722 --> 00:00:55.780 - One day he was driving spikes into railroad ties and looked up to see half a dozen great blue herons 00:00:55.780 --> 00:01:05.377 - flying overhead. They seemed to be looking for a place to land among the steel mills and the power plants, 00:01:05.377 --> 00:01:14.435 - following some ancestral memory of what Indiana used to be like. Unable to spy any water, the herons 00:01:14.435 --> 00:01:15.870 - kept on flying. 00:01:16.866 --> 00:01:25.285 - And some part of the young Gary Nebhan flew on with them. He discovered in himself a deep ancestral 00:01:25.285 --> 00:01:33.789 - urge to learn about these great birds, about their lives and the lives of other creatures, and about 00:01:33.789 --> 00:01:37.662 - the great natural cycles that embrace us all. 00:01:52.642 --> 00:02:03.995 - Hold it. Some 30 years later, our own Sycamore Land Trust here in Monroe County has helped protect over 00:02:03.995 --> 00:02:15.240 - 300 acres in a place called Bean Blossom Bottoms, which includes a rookery for great blue herons. Many 00:02:15.240 --> 00:02:19.934 - people gave their money and labor and time 00:02:20.130 --> 00:02:29.256 - to make sure that these majestic birds would have a place to breed and feed and rest in our neighborhood. 00:02:29.256 --> 00:02:38.037 - And one of the inspirations for all of this effort was the work done over the years by Gary Nabhan as 00:02:38.037 --> 00:02:46.991 - a scientist, a writer, a teacher, and a conservationist. He contributed greatly to the brain drain from 00:02:46.991 --> 00:02:49.918 - Indiana when he decided to leave. 00:02:50.658 --> 00:02:58.351 - going to college in Iowa and then Arizona, and then graduate school in Arizona. Once he settled in the 00:02:58.351 --> 00:03:05.819 - southwest and started eating food laced with chili peppers and listening to salsa music and chasing 00:03:05.819 --> 00:03:13.287 - lizards in the shadows of cacti, he fell in love with the desert and the native people who had made 00:03:13.287 --> 00:03:18.142 - their lives in the desert. I blame our loss on the Indiana dunes 00:03:18.626 --> 00:03:26.073 - where Gary played as a boy and where he developed a taste for sand. As a teacher at the University of 00:03:26.073 --> 00:03:33.447 - Arizona, as a writer in residence at the Sonora Desert Museum, and now as director of the Center for 00:03:33.447 --> 00:03:40.747 - Sustainable Environments at the Northern Arizona University, and above all, as an ethnobotanist and 00:03:40.747 --> 00:03:47.902 - a lyrical writer, Gary has deepened our understanding of the relations between people and nature. 00:03:48.930 --> 00:03:58.980 - At the heart of his work are these questions. How have long settled people survived in a place without 00:03:58.980 --> 00:04:08.932 - ruining it? How can we learn to live in our own places without damaging either our home ground or the 00:04:08.932 --> 00:04:16.542 - planet? His 14 books include The Geography of Childhood, Cultures of Habitat, 00:04:17.442 --> 00:04:27.427 - enduring seeds, and the desert smells like rain. I keep his books in my bedroom in case I wake in the 00:04:27.427 --> 00:04:37.411 - night and need to hear a sane, funny, passionate, and reassuring voice. Gary has won many honors, far 00:04:37.411 --> 00:04:42.110 - too many for someone who still has so much hair 00:04:45.474 --> 00:04:53.969 - Among them, I will mention only that he won the John Burroughs Award in Natural History for his book, 00:04:53.969 --> 00:05:02.463 - Gathering the Desert. He has won Guggenheim and Lannan Fellowships for his writing. He has been named 00:05:02.463 --> 00:05:11.041 - a Pew Scholar and a MacArthur Fellow for his contributions to art, science, and conservation. Finally, 00:05:11.041 --> 00:05:14.622 - I must tell you that he is a man who loves 00:05:15.106 --> 00:05:25.775 - Food. Loves to grow it, gather it, cook it, share it. Once when I was at his house in Arizona, he served 00:05:25.775 --> 00:05:36.037 - a meal with enough chili to make my insides feel as though I had swallowed molten lava. For dessert, 00:05:36.037 --> 00:05:43.454 - he offered homemade vanilla ice cream. I thought something cool at last. 00:05:45.890 --> 00:05:54.452 - As I lifted a tablespoon-sized bite to my mouth, I noticed the little flecks of vanilla beans set off 00:05:54.452 --> 00:06:02.846 - against the white. Gary watched me closely. And as I swallowed, I was astounded to discover the ice 00:06:02.846 --> 00:06:11.323 - cream was even hotter than the rest of supper. Oh, he says, those little bits, those aren't vanilla. 00:06:11.323 --> 00:06:13.086 - Those are jalapenos. 00:06:14.818 --> 00:06:22.761 - He is a spicy man on the page and in person, one of the most intensely alive people I have ever known. 00:06:22.761 --> 00:06:30.549 - I think of him when I grow discouraged about our ruinous way of life in this country. I think of him 00:06:30.549 --> 00:06:38.337 - when the day's news makes me wonder if we will ever figure out how to live more decently and wisely. 00:06:38.337 --> 00:06:42.270 - I think of him every time I see a great blue heron 00:06:42.690 --> 00:06:49.461 - wading in one of our streams or flying overhead. I am glad that he has flown back to Indiana, 00:06:49.461 --> 00:06:52.702 - if only briefly. Please welcome Gary Napier. 00:07:30.754 --> 00:07:37.840 - going to tell you a story about a year of eating locally, a year that also happened to be a watershed 00:07:37.840 --> 00:07:44.856 - in the history of global food politics. It is the story of finding kindred, food-loving souls within 00:07:44.856 --> 00:07:51.803 - a 250-mile radius around my home in the desert and sharing with them the pleasures of gardening and 00:07:51.803 --> 00:07:56.318 - gathering, pit roasting and fermenting, feasting and frolicking. 00:07:57.122 --> 00:08:05.034 - But it is also a story of juxtapositions about how the remaining farmers, fishermen, and foragers within 00:08:05.034 --> 00:08:13.171 - my food shed struggle with challenges, insults, and absurdities different than the ones which our ancestors 00:08:13.171 --> 00:08:20.782 - faced a century ago. Wherever I foraged with my neighbors for wild greens, hunted for quail, or sown 00:08:20.782 --> 00:08:24.926 - heirloom crops, we have seldom been out of the earshot 00:08:25.346 --> 00:08:33.306 - of the global vending machine. It can still be heard dropping its hermetically sealed packages of textured 00:08:33.306 --> 00:08:40.819 - soy protein, genetically engineered tortillas, and artificial spices no matter how hard you or I try 00:08:40.819 --> 00:08:48.258 - to get away from its noise. Fortunately, I'm not the only one wondering about what kinds of ancient 00:08:48.258 --> 00:08:55.102 - culinary melodies are being drowned out by the noise of that transnational vending machine. 00:08:55.970 --> 00:09:04.920 - If I can be so bold as to proclaim that we have just lived through a defining moment, the equivalent 00:09:04.920 --> 00:09:13.869 - of a Boston tea party for food, I would say that the spring of 1999 to the spring of 2001 was indeed 00:09:13.869 --> 00:09:20.958 - such a moment. Farmers refused to grow certain patented seeds hoisted upon them 00:09:21.090 --> 00:09:27.545 - by transnational corporations, and students destroyed experimental fields and labs where genetically 00:09:27.545 --> 00:09:34.255 - engineered crops were being developed. Consumers demanded that the contents of foods be labeled on their 00:09:34.255 --> 00:09:40.645 - packages and boycotted companies with deceptive advertising. Mobs attacked McDonald's and Starbucks 00:09:40.645 --> 00:09:45.694 - as part of the protests against a World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle. 00:09:45.858 --> 00:09:53.190 - Other countries fought against the corporate control of farmland, seeds, and genes and banned loads 00:09:53.190 --> 00:10:00.596 - of US agricultural products potentially harmful to butterflies and babies. The launching of the slow 00:10:00.596 --> 00:10:08.002 - food movement in the United States made me aware that there are at least 60,000 like-minded souls in 00:10:08.002 --> 00:10:15.774 - Europe and Latin America alone. This story then celebrates the sensual pleasures of food without ignoring 00:10:16.034 --> 00:10:24.382 - It's global politics, for we will hardly be able to savor such pleasures any longer if we do not decide 00:10:24.382 --> 00:10:32.409 - how to unplug that omnipresent vending machine. That's the introduction of a book that's coming out 00:10:32.409 --> 00:10:40.757 - in just two weeks. I wish I could have brought copies with me. It's from the last independent publisher 00:10:40.757 --> 00:10:43.486 - left in New York City, WW Norton. 00:10:44.066 --> 00:10:52.305 - As you may know, all the other New York publishers are now owned by just four companies that produce 00:10:52.305 --> 00:11:00.951 - 75% of the book sales in the United States, thanks to their agreements with Barnes and Noble and Borders. 00:11:00.951 --> 00:11:09.272 - But there are healthy counter movements in publishing happening, just as there are in food production 00:11:09.272 --> 00:11:13.758 - and sustainable design and sustainable transportation. 00:11:14.690 --> 00:11:23.009 - I'm really pleased to be able to read you parts of this book. It's really the first time I'm presenting 00:11:23.009 --> 00:11:31.248 - the ideas of the book as a whole. And I'm really happy that that's happening in the state where I grew 00:11:31.248 --> 00:11:39.327 - up, although Scott continues to remind me that growing up in Gary, Indiana does not really make me a 00:11:39.327 --> 00:11:43.646 - Hoosier. There's something about the Northwest region 00:11:43.906 --> 00:11:52.532 - of Indiana that is somewhat unhoosierly, at least to the superficial eye. I'm also really grateful to 00:11:52.532 --> 00:12:01.074 - have just spotted Tom Sernak, one of my oldest friends from the Indiana Dunes in the audience. Don't 00:12:01.074 --> 00:12:09.278 - know how he hears about things, but he seems to always do. Tom runs with a number of friends and 00:12:09.474 --> 00:12:17.990 - family members to Save the Dunes Council, the first conservation organization I ever joined when I was 00:12:17.990 --> 00:12:27.002 - 18 years old and the annual dues were only $8 a year. Things have changed since then. I'm going to interlace 00:12:27.002 --> 00:12:35.435 - some brief readings of segments of the book with a few commentaries now and then, but try to give you 00:12:35.435 --> 00:12:37.502 - a sense of this sweep of 00:12:38.786 --> 00:12:47.077 - One year of eating locally, that is my wife Lori and I tried to get four out of every five of our meals 00:12:47.077 --> 00:12:55.448 - from the foods that grew within our desert food shed, the Colorado River watershed in the adjacent upper 00:12:55.448 --> 00:13:03.500 - reaches of the Sea of Cortez. We spent part of the year on the Sea of Cortez working with indigenous 00:13:03.500 --> 00:13:07.486 - communities there and part of the year in Arizona 00:13:08.546 --> 00:13:16.968 - teaching and doing other things. We're now in Flagstaff where we've just helped launch the first farmers 00:13:16.968 --> 00:13:25.630 - market in northern Arizona that's occurred there in 50 years and have also published a regional sustainable 00:13:25.630 --> 00:13:33.971 - foods directory that's now going out to about 8,000 people in that region so that they can buy directly 00:13:33.971 --> 00:13:38.142 - from farmers who used to get over three quarters of 00:13:38.882 --> 00:13:46.822 - a dollar on every dollar that you and I bought as consumers and now they get about seven or eight cents 00:13:46.822 --> 00:13:54.456 - of that dollar whereas most middlemen get at least as much as they do in this chain of food passing 00:13:54.456 --> 00:14:02.396 - through six to ten hands from the time it's produced and the place it's produced before it travels some 00:14:02.396 --> 00:14:06.366 - fifteen hundred miles and then lands in your mouth. 00:14:07.010 --> 00:14:14.012 - In a sense, one of the biggest grievances I have is that with farmers only getting eight or nine cents 00:14:14.012 --> 00:14:21.218 - of each dollar that we pay for the food that we eat as consumers, they don't have as much slack to invest 00:14:21.218 --> 00:14:28.560 - in the land stewardship that they'd like to see and we'd like to see. Being involved in community-supported 00:14:28.560 --> 00:14:35.426 - agriculture, your farmers markets, and many of the other things that you all deeply care about helps 00:14:35.426 --> 00:14:36.990 - remedy that situation. 00:14:37.890 --> 00:14:45.461 - So I'm going to talk first about some things that Lori and I did in our yard and around our house. And 00:14:45.461 --> 00:14:52.958 - although the plants and animals are different, they're things that any of us can do wherever we live. 00:14:52.958 --> 00:15:00.455 - Perhaps trying this out in one of the driest, hottest regions of the world, hottest in the sense that 00:15:00.455 --> 00:15:07.070 - we have more kinds of chilies and the best kinds of hot chilies. I don't care much about. 00:15:07.522 --> 00:15:15.355 - air temperatures since my brain cells were burned out many years ago when I first lived in the desert. 00:15:15.355 --> 00:15:23.189 - When we say the desert is hot, we mean because it's so rich in wonderfully hot chilies. By trying this 00:15:23.189 --> 00:15:31.554 - out there and then extrapolating to and visiting other things that are happening elsewhere in this continent, 00:15:31.554 --> 00:15:37.182 - I think we demonstrated that this can really be done almost anywhere from 00:15:37.666 --> 00:15:47.888 - parts of Long Island up to the coastal areas of Alaska and certainly through the Midwest and South and 00:15:47.888 --> 00:15:58.110 - Western states. The final parts of this, if I don't explain it well when we come to it, were generated 00:15:58.110 --> 00:16:06.942 - by a walk that Laurie and I did across our entire food shed, one radius of this 250-mile 00:16:07.746 --> 00:16:17.172 - diameter circle that we were interested in. And we walked with elders and young people from two different 00:16:17.172 --> 00:16:26.241 - cultures at the start of the walk, and we were joined by 180 additional people of four other cultures 00:16:26.241 --> 00:16:35.400 - for the last day of that walk to celebrate the desert's bounty, its biodiversity, and how that relates 00:16:35.400 --> 00:16:36.734 - to maintaining 00:16:37.442 --> 00:16:45.853 - both our health and the heritage of desert cultures. And I'm really grateful to all the people who were 00:16:45.853 --> 00:16:54.021 - both our teachers and guides on that trip and the young people who joined us in that effort. Some of 00:16:54.021 --> 00:17:02.108 - them who had not only spent their entire lives without ever eating native foods for an entire week. 00:17:02.108 --> 00:17:06.718 - We cold turkeyed any product from outside of our region. 00:17:07.362 --> 00:17:15.601 - But in a couple cases, some of the young walkers with us admitted that that was the first time in five 00:17:15.601 --> 00:17:24.159 - to 10 years that they had been off drugs or alcohol. And they really felt that this walk, this pilgrimage, 00:17:24.159 --> 00:17:33.438 - put them on a path that saved their life. And I'm humbled by their stamina and desire to see such dramatic changes. 00:17:33.570 --> 00:17:41.993 - in their lives since the little changes we were making nearly broke our backs. So here goes. This whole 00:17:41.993 --> 00:17:50.172 - effort started out two springs ago just outside of Tucson. Spring equinox, a day of turning over the 00:17:50.172 --> 00:17:58.271 - earth, churning up dark garden soil buried beneath the winter's leaf litter, trying to replenish it 00:17:58.271 --> 00:17:59.486 - with sunlight. 00:17:59.810 --> 00:18:07.075 - a day of humus-stained hands and hopeful hearts. Lori and I pass the daylight hours weeding, tilling, 00:18:07.075 --> 00:18:14.197 - watering, and planting. We work to make a fertile place for vegetables, herbs, and beans in all the 00:18:14.197 --> 00:18:21.319 - unsewn garden beds around our desert home. I took a pick in my hand, a pick known as a Pulaski, and 00:18:21.319 --> 00:18:24.382 - loosened the dry, compacted alkaline soil. 00:18:24.578 --> 00:18:31.583 - Lori, a few feet away from me, wisps of blonde hair streaming over her face, turned it over shovel full 00:18:31.583 --> 00:18:38.655 - by shovel full. I sifted the decomposed matter rescued from our compost pit of food scraps and clippings 00:18:38.655 --> 00:18:45.525 - until I had separated out the smaller grain particles, returning the larger chunks back into the pit. 00:18:45.525 --> 00:18:52.396 - We folded in leaf litter and organic soil gleaned from beneath mesquite trees and poured this mixture 00:18:52.396 --> 00:18:53.406 - into the beds. 00:18:53.570 --> 00:19:01.297 - establishing a new blend of local earth. Down on the soiled knees of our genes, we planted one heirloom 00:19:01.297 --> 00:19:09.099 - seed stock after another, watering them, covering them with netting, and then placing larger mess frames 00:19:09.099 --> 00:19:16.678 - over them to deter the birds. I mulled the names of the seeds as we buried them snugly in their beds. 00:19:16.678 --> 00:19:22.622 - Mesilla Valley chili pasilla, Papago pinto tepary bean, Mrs. Burns lemon basil, 00:19:22.978 --> 00:19:31.337 - Zuni Tomatio. It was a canicle of desert seeds, sung into the darkness in hope that they would rise 00:19:31.337 --> 00:19:40.449 - again into light. This day of toil marked the first phase of a 15-month ritual, one involving my sweetheart, 00:19:40.449 --> 00:19:49.059 - Lori, as well as many of my kin and old friends. The ritual extended beyond the planting of vegetables 00:19:49.059 --> 00:19:50.814 - in our own backyard. 00:19:51.266 --> 00:19:57.564 - It included the tending of a small orchard and some terraces of agaves and prickly pears in front of 00:19:57.564 --> 00:20:03.800 - our house, the gathering of desert greens, yucca blossoms, cactus buds, and fruit in the wild lands 00:20:03.800 --> 00:20:10.597 - beyond our fence, the hunting of game birds, and the capture of other creatures out of the desert wilderness 00:20:10.597 --> 00:20:16.958 - that seemed boundless around us. We searched for other food producers hidden in our own neighborhood, 00:20:17.218 --> 00:20:24.899 - discovering those who locally grow vegetables, dress out game, or can fruit which complement our own. 00:20:24.899 --> 00:20:32.805 - The ritual then moved indoors to the drying rack, the chopping block, the hand crank grinder, the stove, 00:20:32.805 --> 00:20:39.582 - and the dinner table. It had no single name. It might be termed a communion of neighbors. 00:20:40.450 --> 00:20:47.953 - It might be thought of as a return to the old ways of subsisting on native resources at a time when 00:20:47.953 --> 00:20:55.456 - globalization is all the rage. My friend Jack Kloppenberg called it coming back into the food shed. 00:20:55.456 --> 00:21:01.534 - As some kind of shorthand to myself, I've decided to call it coming home to eat. 00:21:02.050 --> 00:21:10.188 - I've lost my interest in those movable feasts or global smorgasbords, which have been the most pervasive 00:21:10.188 --> 00:21:18.482 - secular rites celebrated by humankind since the Industrial Revolution began. Let me try to be more precise 00:21:18.482 --> 00:21:27.550 - about what this ritual entails, for precision is not normally my inclination. I have initiated an extended communion 00:21:27.778 --> 00:21:36.098 - with my plant and animal neighbors, the native flora and fauna found within 250 miles of my home. I've 00:21:36.098 --> 00:21:44.257 - chosen to eat with them as well as to eat them. I've decided to join in what Italo Calvino calls the 00:21:44.257 --> 00:21:52.982 - ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware in our turn of being swallowed. Calvino suggests 00:21:52.982 --> 00:21:55.486 - that we must swallow our pride 00:21:55.874 --> 00:22:04.965 - and erase the lines between our bodies and that of sopa de frijoles, huachinango, alabera, cruzano, 00:22:04.965 --> 00:22:14.421 - and enchiladas. For the moment, as I pick up a clod of clay, roll it into a marble-sized ball, and tuck 00:22:14.421 --> 00:22:23.694 - it into my cheek, I think, let me stick to this earth a while longer. Still, this ritual is simple in 00:22:23.694 --> 00:22:25.694 - its intent to make me 00:22:25.858 --> 00:22:34.026 - a direct participant as fully and as frequently as possible in the making of the bread and wine, which 00:22:34.026 --> 00:22:41.955 - sustains not only my life, but the lives around me as well. At last, I want to fully bear the brunt 00:22:41.955 --> 00:22:50.202 - of what my own eating in the world entails. I want to escape the trap that I, like most Americans, have 00:22:50.202 --> 00:22:53.374 - fallen into over the last four decades. 00:22:53.474 --> 00:23:01.282 - Obtaining nine-tenths of our food from non-local sources with shippers, processors, packagers, retailers, 00:23:01.282 --> 00:23:09.163 - and advertisers gaining three times more income off each dollar of food purchased than farmers, fishermen, 00:23:09.163 --> 00:23:17.118 - and ranchers do. I want to reduce the distance that my food travels before it reaches my mouth and my mind. 00:23:17.538 --> 00:23:27.035 - so that I can reduce the ignorance which my friend Jim Harrison describes with such devastating simplicity. 00:23:27.035 --> 00:23:36.180 - As Jim says, the majority of our population that eats beef, pork, and chicken has never known an actual 00:23:36.180 --> 00:23:43.742 - cow, pig, or hen. However straightforward my intentions have been, the road back home 00:23:44.066 --> 00:23:51.555 - has been chock full of holes and marred with curves, bumps, and sudden diversions. It has taken me more 00:23:51.555 --> 00:23:58.756 - than a year to get to this point of beginning in earnest. What I had hoped this ritual might do, as 00:23:58.756 --> 00:24:06.389 - most rituals eventually do, was to move me beyond abstract intention into the unanticipated peculiarities 00:24:06.389 --> 00:24:12.510 - of practice. Each day's bread, each season's batch of wine might rise and take shape 00:24:12.962 --> 00:24:21.663 - in its own weird and wonderful way. The folks that I make and break bread with are surely part of this 00:24:21.663 --> 00:24:30.701 - communion as well. Every mouthful I take will be flavored and graced by their presence. After our planning 00:24:30.701 --> 00:24:39.486 - was finished by dusk, I went into the house to complete one last chore for the day. It was a cleansing. 00:24:39.842 --> 00:24:46.690 - One cognizant of the fact that the average American brings home some 3,300 pounds of foodstuffs each 00:24:46.690 --> 00:24:53.470 - year for his or her own consumption. Of course, much of that is never eaten. It is nearly two and a 00:24:53.470 --> 00:25:00.250 - half times the weight of what most of our contemporaries in other regions around the world consume. 00:25:00.250 --> 00:25:03.166 - And much of it comes from their farmlands. 00:25:03.714 --> 00:25:10.643 - While hoping to curb my excesses in eating and wasting, I had also decided to purge my kitchen cabinets 00:25:10.643 --> 00:25:17.306 - of all the foods whose origins were distant or unknown from me and whose presence would distract me 00:25:17.306 --> 00:25:24.369 - from my mission. Instead of eating them myself or just tossing them away, I would take them to a drop-off 00:25:24.369 --> 00:25:31.098 - box for the Community Food Bank of Tucson in the hope that they would find some use by those without 00:25:31.098 --> 00:25:33.630 - the slack to buy them, to waste them. 00:25:33.890 --> 00:25:43.835 - or even to give them away. I went through one cabinet after another looking at things as if 00:25:43.835 --> 00:25:54.860 - I had Alzheimer's. How did that get there? Did I ever really buy something called marshmallow blasted 00:25:54.860 --> 00:26:01.886 - fruit loops? Did I ever think that the home baked fruits offered 00:26:02.402 --> 00:26:10.578 - to me by Kraft Foods of Cherrytown, New York, were produced by employees that have a passion for food 00:26:10.578 --> 00:26:18.673 - and a deep love for the taste of home-baked bakery goods. I had never even noticed how far the foods 00:26:18.673 --> 00:26:25.566 - in my cabinets had traveled in order to have the honor of being eaten by an American. 00:26:26.178 --> 00:26:33.631 - For instance, the brand of boiled baby clams I buy now and then at a corner store was packaged in California 00:26:33.631 --> 00:26:40.536 - but grown in aquaculture farms off the coast of Thailand, or what's left of them. The other products 00:26:40.536 --> 00:26:47.442 - that I had, like capers, said that they were made in Mexico, although I'd been assured by scientists 00:26:47.442 --> 00:26:52.638 - that this odd little condiment was only grown in Sicily, France, and Spain. 00:26:54.370 --> 00:27:02.129 - As I completed my kitchen cupboard food inventory, I discovered that I had unknowingly purchased food 00:27:02.129 --> 00:27:10.269 - from six of the top ten food and beverage companies in the world. Nestle, Philip Morris, ConAgra, PepsiCo, 00:27:10.269 --> 00:27:17.877 - Coca-Cola, and Mars. The ten titans of the food and drink business collectively sell more than $220 00:27:17.877 --> 00:27:23.582 - billion of processed agricultural products in the global market each year. 00:27:23.970 --> 00:27:31.452 - In other words, trademark products from these multinational nations now generate about one-tenth of 00:27:31.452 --> 00:27:38.934 - all retail sales of foods and beverages across the earth. That amounts to the average equivalent of 00:27:38.934 --> 00:27:46.565 - $33 worth of processed foods and canned drinks for each of the 6 billion people living on this planet 00:27:46.565 --> 00:27:53.374 - or orbiting around us in satellites at this moment. Together with 41 other transnationals, 00:27:53.890 --> 00:28:02.033 - these 10 global food giants are among the 100 largest economies in the world. In other words, only 49 00:28:02.033 --> 00:28:10.336 - countries generate gross national products on the same order of magnitude that these global food barons 00:28:10.336 --> 00:28:19.038 - do. However eclectic I thought my taste in food had become, this inventory revealed that the bulk of my diet 00:28:19.170 --> 00:28:26.317 - had been brought to me by just a handful of food processors and distributors. My cupboard, fridge, and 00:28:26.317 --> 00:28:33.395 - pantries contents in Arizona were dominated by agricultural commodities that had been bred, produced, 00:28:33.395 --> 00:28:40.472 - processed, and distributed by the same companies active everywhere from Argentina to Zaire. And these 00:28:40.472 --> 00:28:47.966 - companies, while dominating more and more of the world's commerce, were becoming fewer and fewer in number. 00:28:48.258 --> 00:28:57.727 - as mergers and acquisitions in the food industry recently toppled a trillion dollars a year. In contrast, 00:28:57.727 --> 00:29:06.750 - we still seem enamored by that phrase, a taste of homemade food. We still go into restaurants, still 00:29:06.750 --> 00:29:15.862 - buy things in grocery stores that claim to be homemade. But homemade food is not simply the soup that 00:29:15.862 --> 00:29:17.470 - your parents made 00:29:19.042 --> 00:29:26.438 - from a package at your house when you were sick at a child, the carrot tort you won at the cake walk 00:29:26.438 --> 00:29:33.833 - at the grade school across the street, or the fresh tortillas sold door to door by the Mexican widow 00:29:33.833 --> 00:29:41.741 - from the next block over. It is also the oral pleasure that arises from the flavors, minerals, the sourness 00:29:41.741 --> 00:29:48.478 - or the sweetness of the very ground that we walk on, the very soil the seed breaks through, 00:29:48.674 --> 00:29:57.132 - as they take in the air, which we ourselves have recently breathed. To really say homemade food and 00:29:57.132 --> 00:30:05.675 - mean it, we must taste the earth that we stand on in it. In addition to what we have learned to grow 00:30:05.675 --> 00:30:14.133 - at home, we became interested in making weekly contacts with people like ourselves that enjoyed the 00:30:14.133 --> 00:30:16.670 - taste peculiar to our region. 00:30:17.858 --> 00:30:26.835 - Esperanza, the mesquite tortilla lady, met me on a highway corner once a week and delivered two dozen 00:30:26.835 --> 00:30:36.164 - fresh tortillas made from mesquite beans, a product that is not even commercially available in the United 00:30:36.164 --> 00:30:45.318 - States. Ms. Soto, the egg lady, offered us turkey eggs, duck eggs, goose eggs, and aracana chicken eggs 00:30:45.318 --> 00:30:47.166 - whenever I showed up 00:30:47.522 --> 00:30:54.721 - showed up at her house where four of her sons were lounging around on the couches. The folks at the 00:30:54.721 --> 00:31:02.280 - National Fruit Market at 12th and Aho Way whose vegetables and fruit came from a dozen farm towns around 00:31:02.280 --> 00:31:09.767 - southern Arizona called me up whenever something special came in. I also visited an old Chinese grocery 00:31:09.767 --> 00:31:16.318 - that sold venison from Globe, Arizona, 100 miles northeast, and shrimp from of all places, 00:31:16.450 --> 00:31:24.494 - Gila Bend, Arizona, down the dry river from me 100 miles. I never figured that one out. The Rodriguez 00:31:24.494 --> 00:31:32.537 - Fish Market, which featured Sea of Cortez catches brought in daily from Rocky Point, Sonora, which is 00:31:32.537 --> 00:31:40.502 - Arizona's adopted seaport, offered us cabrilla and guacinango. All of this reminded me of one simple 00:31:40.502 --> 00:31:45.470 - fact. While I was busy obtaining four out of five of my meals, 00:31:45.794 --> 00:31:54.155 - from within a half day's drive or a 10 day walk of my home. Most of my fellow citizens in Arizona were 00:31:54.155 --> 00:32:02.354 - sourcing four out of five of their meals from distant lands. By 1980, Arizonans were already gaining 00:32:02.354 --> 00:32:10.878 - less than a third of their food supplies from Arizona crops, livestock, poultry, and eggs. Nevertheless, 00:32:11.074 --> 00:32:17.436 - Through my contact with Esperanza, the tortilla lady, and Ms. Soto, the egg lady, I no longer doubted 00:32:17.436 --> 00:32:23.737 - that there were others in my neighborhood, county, and state who preferred informal networks of food 00:32:23.737 --> 00:32:30.349 - exchange to purchasing groceries at supermarket chains. As Lori and I spoke on the telephone with family, 00:32:30.349 --> 00:32:36.649 - neighbors, and friends living in other regions of the continent, they would tell us of their delight 00:32:36.649 --> 00:32:39.518 - in finding similar networks where they lived. 00:32:39.906 --> 00:32:46.904 - a small harbor on the Atlantic seaboard where you could purchase fish directly from the boat on which 00:32:46.904 --> 00:32:54.177 - it was caught. Flea markets, swap meets, and garage sales where berries, jerk meat, and sour mash whiskey 00:32:54.177 --> 00:33:01.381 - could be purchased out of the trunks of cars amidst used exercise equipment, velvet paintings, and eight 00:33:01.381 --> 00:33:05.566 - track tapes of Elvis live in Las Vegas. Church bazaars where 00:33:05.762 --> 00:33:13.604 - Old farmers would auction off their home-cured hams, or a couple spinsters would offer the sassafras 00:33:13.604 --> 00:33:21.911 - root beer they had brewed up. Without involving any advertising agencies, shipping firms, fancy packaging, 00:33:21.911 --> 00:33:29.365 - or middleman markups, millions of pounds of American foods have been brought with cash in hand, 00:33:29.365 --> 00:33:34.334 - bartered for, or given away as gifts every summer of our lives. 00:33:34.850 --> 00:33:41.858 - It is the true commerce of the continent, the kind that Walt Whitman would have loved. All those cactus 00:33:41.858 --> 00:33:48.596 - pickers, turkey smokers, and egg gatherers, and all those fishmongers, ham curers, bootleggers, and 00:33:48.596 --> 00:33:55.671 - mushroomers, all the root beer brewers, persimmon pluckers, ginseng diggers, clamors, nocturnal crawfish 00:33:55.671 --> 00:34:02.746 - prowlers, and crab potters still out and about in the shallows, woods, and little fields happily working 00:34:02.746 --> 00:34:04.094 - what Whitman called 00:34:04.194 --> 00:34:14.471 - the land of 10 million virgin farms. In the end, the more Lori and I learned about the ecological effects 00:34:14.471 --> 00:34:24.458 - of industrializing and globalizing food, the more we had but one prevailing inclination to ensure that 00:34:24.458 --> 00:34:32.990 - our friends and family, that what our friends and family ate supported the conservation 00:34:33.314 --> 00:34:41.249 - and not the degradation of the creatures in our own food shed and in our own watershed. If nearly half 00:34:41.249 --> 00:34:49.185 - of all the sunlight captured on this planet was now being funneled into fueling only our species, what 00:34:49.185 --> 00:34:57.274 - was happening to the rest of the gang out there? Given that most of our food was coming from the greater 00:34:57.274 --> 00:35:02.590 - Colorado River watershed and the Sea of Cortez into which it flowed, 00:35:03.106 --> 00:35:11.169 - How is the wildlife out there faring if they only had a portion of the resources that formerly sustained 00:35:11.169 --> 00:35:18.924 - them? Were the native plants that had supported humans for 8,000 years in Arizona still regenerating 00:35:18.924 --> 00:35:27.371 - themselves? Were they being crushed by our big ecological footprint? That footprint, the amount of productive 00:35:27.371 --> 00:35:29.982 - land needed to support each of us 00:35:30.594 --> 00:35:39.726 - was size 12 acres for the average American, size 9.5 acres for Europeans, and size 1.2 acres for most 00:35:39.726 --> 00:35:48.679 - of the residents in developing countries. Lori and I were troubled by that. We wanted to go out and 00:35:48.679 --> 00:35:57.990 - see how the watershed which nurtured us was faring to provide all of us within its school a report card 00:35:57.990 --> 00:36:00.318 - of its ecological health. 00:36:13.634 --> 00:36:21.380 - When Lori and I first expressed that urge to know our food shed intimately, neither of us could have 00:36:21.380 --> 00:36:29.049 - imagined that six months later we would complete the last leg of a trek from the Sea of Cortez back 00:36:29.049 --> 00:36:37.178 - into southern Arizona and the Colorado River watershed with over 140 O'atam, Surrey, Yaqui, Hopi, Latino, 00:36:37.178 --> 00:36:43.006 - and Anglo pilgrims walking along with us. We were all slowly trudging along 00:36:43.266 --> 00:36:49.672 - behind a handful of elders who are chanting out a riveting homecoming song. We had come home to the 00:36:49.672 --> 00:36:56.142 - foods and medicines that could nourish us without depleting the desert around us, the desert that we 00:36:56.142 --> 00:37:02.741 - had walked through and camped in for the previous 12 days. As I caught sight of several hundred people 00:37:02.741 --> 00:37:09.211 - there to greet us at the end of our 250-mile pilgrimage, I knew in my heart that the vision that had 00:37:09.211 --> 00:37:12.350 - propelled us was no longer, if it had ever been, 00:37:12.674 --> 00:37:19.798 - mine nor Laurie's nor that of any other person alone. What had happened to us was due to some collective 00:37:19.798 --> 00:37:26.718 - affirmation that we all needed, all of us, to reengage with the lands and the seas immediately before 00:37:26.718 --> 00:37:33.638 - us, the deep traditions about them that could guide us. By renewing our contact with the power of the 00:37:33.638 --> 00:37:40.830 - desert and the ocean, their foods and their medicines, their songs and their stories, we could be healed. 00:37:41.314 --> 00:37:48.267 - And as we learned in conversations with others along the way, we were not the only ones who were opting 00:37:48.267 --> 00:37:55.153 - for local foods and medicines, rather than just accepting any organic foods, no matter where they came 00:37:55.153 --> 00:37:59.966 - from, or any natural herb remedy, whether it was from Siberia or Chile. 00:38:01.890 --> 00:38:08.658 - Lori and I gathered together with our neighbors, fishermen and foragers from the Seri villages, farmers 00:38:08.658 --> 00:38:15.297 - and basket makers from the Papago Indian Reservation, seed savers from Native Seed Search, schoolyard 00:38:15.297 --> 00:38:21.870 - gardeners from the Hashan Charter School. We joined together for a collective journey to see how our 00:38:21.870 --> 00:38:28.638 - health stemmed from the very wildlife habitats, croplands, and cultural communities that surrounded us. 00:38:28.738 --> 00:38:35.930 - We went out to see how badly those habitats, fields, and communities had been injured and how that had 00:38:35.930 --> 00:38:42.912 - something to do with our own injuries and maladies. We tasted what each community we passed through 00:38:42.912 --> 00:38:50.034 - called their local foods and took a hard look at how it was produced. We learned how to step together 00:38:50.034 --> 00:38:57.016 - covering one long desert mile after another until some 250 miles had been completed and celebrated. 00:38:57.016 --> 00:38:57.854 - It was then 00:38:58.050 --> 00:39:04.867 - that we realized we would have to dedicate the rest of our lives in one way or another to restoring 00:39:04.867 --> 00:39:11.821 - our communities to fuller health. And so we called this little trek the Desert Walk for Biodiversity, 00:39:11.821 --> 00:39:18.365 - Heritage, and Health, a multicultural pilgrimage fueled by native foods and medicines, prayers, 00:39:18.365 --> 00:39:25.250 - and songs. We unabashedly spoke about what ailed us. One autumn pilgrim broke the silence by telling 00:39:25.250 --> 00:39:26.750 - us how he felt doomed 00:39:26.850 --> 00:39:35.251 - to a premature death when he found out that he had diabetes, a disease that was not even in the community 00:39:35.251 --> 00:39:43.256 - where he grew up a half century ago. And then a younger fittersary Indian fisherman admitted that he 00:39:43.256 --> 00:39:51.419 - had once thought that only other tribes suffered from diabetes until he himself was diagnosed with the 00:39:51.419 --> 00:39:52.766 - same affliction. 00:39:54.562 --> 00:40:01.685 - By the time we had walked our 200-some miles, we had put considerable distance between ourselves and 00:40:01.685 --> 00:40:08.384 - those Zucaritas, Tony the Tiger corn flakes, and Coca Colas. We had feasted on boiled venison, 00:40:08.384 --> 00:40:15.860 - baked rabbit, and grilled corvina, tomatillo consumés and squash soufflés, tepary bean burritos wrapped 00:40:15.860 --> 00:40:21.854 - in mesquite tortillas, freshly picked and lightly steamed lamb's quarters, purslane, 00:40:22.114 --> 00:40:29.284 - tansy mustards, and cress. We had guzzled down ocotillo blossom tea and prickly pear punch, mistletoe, 00:40:29.284 --> 00:40:36.733 - and Mormon tea. We had been presented gifts of organ pipe jam, stewed pumpkin, and pinole to eat, creosote 00:40:36.733 --> 00:40:43.972 - bush salve, jojoba oil, and Damiana tea to lessen our aches, pains, blisters, and bruises. Our desserts 00:40:43.972 --> 00:40:49.054 - had ranged from chia seeds soaked in cactus juice to pit roasted mezcal. 00:40:49.314 --> 00:40:56.835 - We had walked right past stores full of sodas and beers, chips and cupcakes, knowing that they seldom 00:40:56.835 --> 00:41:04.431 - take away our hunger and thirst. Instead, we gathered around campfires at night, listening to personal 00:41:04.431 --> 00:41:11.878 - testimonials of hardships and rising to dance with one another as fiddlers, drummers, rattleshakers, 00:41:11.878 --> 00:41:17.630 - and singers moved us to our feet. Then up and walking once more the next day, 00:41:17.730 --> 00:41:26.986 - We bore witness to what was happening to the land, both good and bad. It was a slow walking meditation 00:41:26.986 --> 00:41:35.972 - on where we've been, what we've ignored around us, and what we had yet to see. As we started up the 00:41:35.972 --> 00:41:44.958 - very last hill before crossing the border from Mexico into the US near the last leg of our journey, 00:41:46.274 --> 00:41:52.498 - We saw several Indian women singing on the roadside and shaking their gourd rattles. Cameramen began 00:41:52.498 --> 00:41:58.661 - to appear everywhere, and even the customs officials were there to welcome us, waving like children 00:41:58.661 --> 00:42:05.070 - as if they'd never witnessed someone crossing the border. I was so caught up in the rhythm of the music 00:42:05.070 --> 00:42:11.664 - that someone had to nudge me to get me to look up on the ridge paralleling the road where we were walking. 00:42:11.664 --> 00:42:14.622 - There, moving at the same speed we were moving, 00:42:15.010 --> 00:42:21.684 - were a half dozen Mexican hikers intent to cross the border at the exact same time that we did when 00:42:21.684 --> 00:42:28.425 - the customs officials in border patrol were most distracted. They were in plain view to anyone whose 00:42:28.425 --> 00:42:35.499 - eyes wandered toward the eastern horizon. But at that moment, all eyes were upon us. That was when little 00:42:35.499 --> 00:42:42.240 - things began to go wrong. No one could find the bag of bread we had brought along for the borderline 00:42:42.240 --> 00:42:42.974 - communion. 00:42:43.522 --> 00:42:50.484 - The digital camera was accidentally locked inside the van, as were the keys. When they were rescued 00:42:50.484 --> 00:42:57.585 - with another set of keys, the camera was dropped on the ground. And then, like the rest of us, it had 00:42:57.585 --> 00:43:04.686 - trouble focusing for a while. But then the singing smoothed everyone out, and a dozen cameras flashed 00:43:04.686 --> 00:43:12.414 - as we reached the graded cattle guard that served as the boundary between two lands, between people, cuisines, 00:43:12.802 --> 00:43:21.742 - caloric opportunities, and ultimately destinies. Onlookers clapped while we cheered and posed for pictures. 00:43:21.742 --> 00:43:30.268 - Suddenly, our friends from the other side appeared with an armful of the breads we had chosen to break 00:43:30.268 --> 00:43:38.628 - on the border, not for nourishment, but for catharsis. We had chosen Wonder Bread and Pan Bimbo, the 00:43:38.628 --> 00:43:42.270 - loaves of foul air and feeble constitution. 00:43:43.362 --> 00:43:49.809 - They were the foods that had come out of nowhere, one elderly Indian said, the foods that had lured 00:43:49.809 --> 00:43:56.642 - us all with their empty promises, that had seduced us like the whores and studs in a border town brothel, 00:43:56.642 --> 00:44:03.604 - that had dazzled us with the glitter of their baggage but left us feeling hungry and heartbroken, cheapened 00:44:03.604 --> 00:44:09.406 - and cheated, diseased and dirtied. They were the loaves that had doped us into forgetting 00:44:09.570 --> 00:44:16.992 - what truly had nourished us over the course of our lives. Suddenly, as if he were the exorcist sent 00:44:16.992 --> 00:44:24.414 - to drive away the devil, Adolfo, the Sari Indian elder, howled out a song and a dozen of us saw the 00:44:24.414 --> 00:44:32.132 - bread at our feet and realized what we all must do. We leapt high then and came down hard on what stood 00:44:32.132 --> 00:44:36.734 - between us and the sacred earth, those lousy loaves of bread. 00:44:37.442 --> 00:44:45.308 - We stomped and danced until those plastic wrapped globs of doughy air bread melted into the ground right 00:44:45.308 --> 00:44:53.024 - on top of the borderline. Some danced the pascola, an ancient dance of the desert, while others hooted 00:44:53.024 --> 00:45:00.740 - and hollered, jumping up and down until the pale empty loaves were beaten flat as tortillas. Pan bimbo 00:45:00.740 --> 00:45:02.014 - and wonder bread 00:45:02.306 --> 00:45:10.159 - were the perfect manifestations of the vacuous nutritional promises of the industrialized food system, 00:45:10.159 --> 00:45:18.012 - the one that had sold our health down the river. I heard echoes of the jingles from my youth, how such 00:45:18.012 --> 00:45:26.018 - facsimiles of bread could build strong bodies 12 ways. They had popped up and spread across the Americas 00:45:26.018 --> 00:45:30.974 - in the 30s, replacing Ash cakes, Stoddy cakes, and Johnny cakes, 00:45:31.106 --> 00:45:40.009 - Baguettes, biscuits, and bagels, focaccias, Puglacies, and pitas, hand-shaped tortillas, and dark, seedy 00:45:40.009 --> 00:45:49.081 - harvest loaves of all shapes and sizes, with one phantom of one standard size, machine-knifed into equally 00:45:49.081 --> 00:45:56.542 - thick slices. A white bread for white America, which sooner or later became so symbolic 00:45:56.802 --> 00:46:04.653 - of the dominant culture that Mexican restaurants would see Americans sit down at their tables and remove 00:46:04.653 --> 00:46:12.579 - all the corn and wheat tortillas they had had out, replacing them with a dozen slices of bimbo or wonder. 00:46:12.579 --> 00:46:20.057 - That bread is as substantial as foam, El Indio smirked, picking up the flattened carcass of a bimbo 00:46:20.057 --> 00:46:23.646 - loaf after the dancing was done. Pan de espuma. 00:46:24.994 --> 00:46:33.055 - as the bewildered customs officials let us pass, I knew that however many more miles we had yet to walk, 00:46:33.055 --> 00:46:41.192 - we had broken bread in an altogether unprecedented sense by accepting no substitutions for true communion 00:46:41.192 --> 00:46:48.870 - with one another and this sacred land. On our last night before we ended the pilgrimage, we had the 00:46:48.870 --> 00:46:51.710 - true communion we had all hoped for. 00:46:51.906 --> 00:46:58.965 - venison and cottontail, pozole and pumpkins, beans and whole grain breads that the autumn villagers 00:46:58.965 --> 00:47:06.095 - of San Pedro had lovingly made for us. Autumn in Anglo, Sarri and Latino were leaning up against one 00:47:06.095 --> 00:47:13.295 - another, tired, quietly weeping as each participant offered prayers and proverbs of thanksgiving. The 00:47:13.295 --> 00:47:20.495 - leader of the autumn youth, Tony Johnson, stood up among us, then scanned the room, looking in to the 00:47:20.495 --> 00:47:21.342 - many faces, 00:47:21.602 --> 00:47:30.075 - around him. We started this walk 10 days ago down by the ocean. We started out there and then we walked 00:47:30.075 --> 00:47:38.303 - all the way. I was afraid we weren't going to make it. We did. I did. It wasn't because any strength 00:47:38.303 --> 00:47:46.938 - that I had that all of you don't have. It was because of the people who are here with us. Yes, the people 00:47:46.938 --> 00:47:51.582 - right here, the desert people alive. That's why I walked 00:47:52.418 --> 00:48:00.649 - I believe that we are not yet dead. Do you understand what I'm saying? We are not dead. There are people 00:48:00.649 --> 00:48:08.489 - who say we might as well be dead because we're diabetic, that we'll die young anyway. They also say 00:48:08.489 --> 00:48:16.406 - we're dead because some of us are alcoholics. But walking from Mexico to here, I didn't see any dead 00:48:16.406 --> 00:48:21.502 - Indians, any dead people at all. We're all alive and we may look 00:48:21.602 --> 00:48:28.860 - dead, tired, dirty, and ugly, but we're alive. There was some laughter, but also others were weeping. 00:48:28.860 --> 00:48:36.048 - I felt a rush of relief wash across the room. It was out on the table. All these folks had been told 00:48:36.048 --> 00:48:43.235 - all their lives that diabetes was in their genes, that there was little that they could do about it, 00:48:43.235 --> 00:48:51.134 - that they should be resolved to a limited life. And now Tony, on behalf of all the Pilgrims, was standing tall 00:48:51.330 --> 00:48:58.240 - and saying that that was a lie. A lie from deterministic scientists who had spent hundreds of millions 00:48:58.240 --> 00:49:05.150 - of dollars trying to find the elusive gene which caused Indian diabetes instead of helping people with 00:49:05.150 --> 00:49:11.859 - ways to live a rich life that included savory native foods and plenty of exercise out in the desert 00:49:11.859 --> 00:49:16.958 - where they lived. And all you kids out there, don't ever tell them that you 00:49:17.570 --> 00:49:23.525 - Don't ever let them tell you that you can't make it. Look at all these people who have walked, all who've 00:49:23.525 --> 00:49:29.311 - helped. We never thought we would make it back, but we made it through again because everyone here was 00:49:29.311 --> 00:49:34.929 - praying for us. Even those who may have never set foot out on the road with us, those people prayed 00:49:34.929 --> 00:49:40.827 - and believed in us and believed we could make it. You know, when we were so far away and we missed home, 00:49:40.827 --> 00:49:46.782 - it didn't feel like we knew where we were going. We didn't know where the next road was going to lead to. 00:49:47.138 --> 00:49:55.112 - The only thing familiar to us, the only things that made us feel at home was those foods and our songs, 00:49:55.112 --> 00:50:02.933 - the ones that come from our traditional way. And I realized that no matter where we were, where we go 00:50:02.933 --> 00:50:10.677 - in this world, if we have our foods, our songs, our language, we'll always be home. And as he spoke, 00:50:10.677 --> 00:50:17.118 - I realized that the words in his language for healing, wildness, and wholeness came 00:50:17.442 --> 00:50:25.861 - from the same roots, and somehow, over the two weeks that had just passed, we had walked all the way 00:50:25.861 --> 00:50:34.947 - down to those roots. I lost about eight pounds during that walk, and as expected, my HDL-LDL ratio improved, 00:50:34.947 --> 00:50:43.283 - confirming that all those high-fiber-rich native foods probably do have the health benefits that we 00:50:43.283 --> 00:50:45.534 - had learned about earlier. 00:50:45.954 --> 00:50:53.627 - But walking has its health benefits, too. And so does foraging. And so does praying. And so does singing 00:50:53.627 --> 00:51:01.446 - and laughing and community building. If the native foods are worth eating only for their value in reducing 00:51:01.446 --> 00:51:08.900 - blood sugar or cholesterol, we might as well just extract their soluble fiber-making genes and insert 00:51:08.900 --> 00:51:15.550 - them in some easy-to-grow, easy-to-prepare, nutraceutical packaged food. But they are also 00:51:16.002 --> 00:51:23.011 - good for the land and good for our souls. I have come to love their flavors, even though some of my 00:51:23.011 --> 00:51:30.019 - friends like Scott still remind me that they're a little too hot for their acquired tastes. I don't 00:51:30.019 --> 00:51:37.239 - doubt that they are right, since I still serve meals at my table that my friends and family don't have 00:51:37.239 --> 00:51:38.430 - the guts to eat. 00:51:39.906 --> 00:51:47.526 - But their acceptability to consumers is not really what is keeping them from being more widely embraced 00:51:47.526 --> 00:51:55.072 - and adopted. The real bottleneck in the revival of local grown foods is a cultural, or more precisely, 00:51:55.072 --> 00:52:02.472 - a spiritual dilemma. If we no longer believe that the earth is sacred, or that we are blessed by the 00:52:02.472 --> 00:52:09.726 - very bounty all around us, or that we have a caretaking responsibility given to us by the creator, 00:52:10.306 --> 00:52:17.835 - It doesn't really matter to most folks how much ecological and cultural damage is done by the way we 00:52:17.835 --> 00:52:25.588 - eat. It doesn't matter whether we ever participate in the butchering of our own meat instead of letting 00:52:25.588 --> 00:52:33.043 - someone else do it, the harvesting and grinding of our grain, the foraging and drying of our herbs, 00:52:33.043 --> 00:52:39.230 - until we stop craving to be somewhere else and someone else other than the animals 00:52:39.490 --> 00:52:48.442 - whose very cells are constituted from the place on the earth that we love the most, then there is little 00:52:48.442 --> 00:52:57.137 - reason to care about the fate of local foods, of family farms, or healthy landscapes and communities. 00:52:57.137 --> 00:53:06.174 - We continue on adding to our dooryard garden, harvesting what we can from the wild lands around our home, 00:53:06.786 --> 00:53:14.063 - raising minor breeds of livestock and planting native seeds. The percentage of food that we get from 00:53:14.063 --> 00:53:21.412 - local sources will no doubt vary through time, but I'm sure it will never return to the abysmally low 00:53:21.412 --> 00:53:29.193 - proportion it was before we began this modest experiment. We can't go back to ignoring where we're situated 00:53:29.193 --> 00:53:36.254 - in the food chain, that cascade of energy that can be shunted in the direction of regeneration or 00:53:36.738 --> 00:53:46.215 - in the other direction towards Desolation Row. Whenever I have doubts about whether all this effort 00:53:46.215 --> 00:53:56.165 - has been worth it, I go out into the wilds beyond my backyard and simply taste a fruit or flower freshly 00:53:56.165 --> 00:54:06.590 - plucked from a local tree or vine. My mouth, my tongue, and my heart remind me what my mind too often forgets 00:54:07.586 --> 00:54:16.421 - that I simply love the flavor and scent of where I live and all the plants and creatures I live with. 00:54:16.421 --> 00:54:17.374 - Thank you. 00:54:54.370 --> 00:55:09.225 - if you're shy I can write down the recipe for jalapeno ice cream. It's really a series of concentric 00:55:09.225 --> 00:55:21.726 - circles is the best way to say it. In other words, we focus most of our foraging and 00:55:21.826 --> 00:55:31.162 - and food growing very, very close to home. But I would think that most of our grandparents would find 00:55:31.162 --> 00:55:40.499 - it absurd that I chose a 250-mile radius. In the desert, that made sense, not only because of the low 00:55:40.499 --> 00:55:50.110 - productivity per acre, but traditionally, the people like the ancestors of the folks that we walked with 00:55:50.402 --> 00:55:58.701 - did that pilgrimage to the ocean and back up watershed. And so I think you can define it as a series 00:55:58.701 --> 00:56:07.083 - of nested sets where you might try to aim to get fully a third of your food from very local within an 00:56:07.083 --> 00:56:15.547 - hour's walk of your home, another circle where you try to get another third that's the people who come 00:56:15.547 --> 00:56:19.902 - into your local farmer's market, and the other third 00:56:20.322 --> 00:56:29.545 - from those distinctive habitats within a certain day's walk or drive from your home. The key thing for 00:56:29.545 --> 00:56:39.036 - me is that we've lost the chance to observe how our food is grown. If I can get to a farm or to a fishing 00:56:39.036 --> 00:56:46.558 - grounds within a day and really see, I feel a lot more comfortable than I do buying 00:56:47.042 --> 00:56:53.831 - strawberries in the winter that are labeled organic that also say that they come from Puerto Monte in 00:56:53.831 --> 00:57:00.486 - Chile. I will never be able to see what organic means to Chileans, and I never know whether they're 00:57:00.486 --> 00:57:07.142 - grown without pesticides and herbicides, but grown with slave labor. I want to know how the food is 00:57:07.142 --> 00:57:11.934 - grown, and I also want to know who knows it. So however far you travel, 00:57:12.514 --> 00:57:18.948 - within a day or a week should be one of the guidelines so that you can actually go out and see the foods. 00:57:18.948 --> 00:57:25.503 - That's why I like the community-supported agriculture projects that have as a requirement that you actually 00:57:25.503 --> 00:57:31.633 - work on the farms or farms where the food's being produced. It's still just kind of a hollow victory 00:57:31.633 --> 00:57:37.703 - to have locally grown foods if it's just delivered to your doorstep every day and you never see the 00:57:37.703 --> 00:57:40.798 - farms every week or whatever it is. Good question. 00:57:42.466 --> 00:57:55.539 - Way back there. Household products and clothing. Great question. That's a much more subtle and complex 00:57:55.539 --> 00:58:09.246 - issue. But at the Center for Sustainable Environments, we're having a lecture series and then a task force. 00:58:09.474 --> 00:58:16.873 - eco-regional task force through the fall and winter that's called Foraging a Greener Economy for the 00:58:16.873 --> 00:58:24.345 - Colorado Plateau. And we're actually going through food, fiber, non-timber forest products like small 00:58:24.345 --> 00:58:31.744 - diameter timber that can be used for housing or furniture making, medicines, basketry materials, and 00:58:31.744 --> 00:58:36.286 - all of those things. And what we're really looking towards is 00:58:36.834 --> 00:58:45.239 - ecoregional certification of products. When we look at the Forest Stewardship Council's recommendations 00:58:45.239 --> 00:58:53.562 - for green certification, certifying that wild foods are sustainably harvested or that cultivated foods 00:58:53.562 --> 00:59:02.290 - and medicines are organically and sustainably grown. Very quickly, after giving you the general guidelines, 00:59:02.290 --> 00:59:06.654 - they say, unless these are adapted and refined to fit 00:59:07.298 --> 00:59:15.619 - constraints and conditions of your own locality, your own climatic and ecological region, these are 00:59:15.619 --> 00:59:24.272 - kind of abstractions. And so we're trying for food, fiber, medicine, utensils to try to figure out what 00:59:24.272 --> 00:59:32.759 - sustainability means for our particular ecoregion and for the cultural mix that we have there. And so 00:59:32.759 --> 00:59:35.422 - I can't speak immediately about 00:59:35.842 --> 00:59:44.827 - household products at the level of detail that I wish I could. But I think it's a very key issue, and 00:59:44.827 --> 00:59:53.723 - thank you for bringing it up. Yes, a couple rows in front there. What's your realistic diagnosis for 00:59:53.723 --> 01:00:02.707 - a dying planet that's going to double itself within one or two years? How do you approach communities 01:00:02.707 --> 01:00:05.438 - under such dire circumstances? 01:00:07.010 --> 01:00:17.425 - You know, my basic approach to life is that I'm an intellectual pessimist, but a glandular optimist. 01:00:17.425 --> 01:00:27.738 - And fortunately, my glands are still functioning. In other words, you could intellectually convince 01:00:27.738 --> 01:00:32.894 - me that we are on a dying planet in dire straits. 01:00:33.122 --> 01:00:43.952 - that our music doesn't sound as good as the other dire straits. But the fact of the matter is, however 01:00:43.952 --> 01:00:54.466 - myopic it seems, those small acts that all of us are capable of on a daily basis still give me hope 01:00:54.466 --> 01:01:02.878 - that I can't think of any other way to reshift our collective priorities, build 01:01:03.106 --> 01:01:12.642 - sustainability into our communities except by taking the modest baby steps each day that each of us 01:01:12.642 --> 01:01:22.274 - can do. I just don't know any other way to do it and however naive that may seem with the population 01:01:22.274 --> 01:01:32.382 - up to six billion and rising and already 40% of all the solar energy on this planet being shut into those 01:01:32.514 --> 01:01:54.135 - 6 million people instead of the other 250,000 species on this planet. Each little step we take still 01:01:54.135 --> 01:02:02.270 - gives me hope. And I... That's right. 01:02:02.562 --> 01:02:17.524 - You know, the number of voices, the size of the chorus is really rapidly growing and I don't want to 01:02:17.524 --> 01:02:32.190 - just talk about, you know, numbers like 60,000 people as paid members of the slow food movement or 01:02:32.290 --> 01:02:39.527 - how many people identify themselves as environmentalists or willing to pay more for organic food or 01:02:39.527 --> 01:02:46.836 - any of that. I mean, those are pretty crude indicators of what's happening and maybe still a drop in 01:02:46.836 --> 01:02:54.363 - the bucket. But some things really give me this sense that we are at a turning point. And one of those, 01:02:54.363 --> 01:03:01.310 - again, was that when I started this project, the very month that I started at Science Magazine, 01:03:02.274 --> 01:03:11.896 - had a survey comparing how Europeans and Americans thought about genetically engineered foods, medical 01:03:11.896 --> 01:03:21.985 - research, such as a stem cell research stuff that's been in the news lately, and chemically and genetically 01:03:21.985 --> 01:03:31.326 - modified agricultural production. And this was a huge issue in Europe by that time, spring of 1999. 01:03:32.514 --> 01:03:42.513 - less than a quarter of all Americans cared about it at all. They redid this survey three months after 01:03:42.513 --> 01:03:52.905 - the WTO conflict in Seattle. And the American awareness of these issues and concern about them was nearly 01:03:52.905 --> 01:04:01.630 - up to the level of Europeans. Now, as an aside, I'm not saying that students should burn 01:04:02.178 --> 01:04:11.768 - experimental fields of genetically engineered corn or go and throw rocks through the windows of Starbucks. 01:04:11.768 --> 01:04:21.000 - But the fact of the matter is that that's what we heard about it, WTO, instead of the Paul Hawkins and 01:04:21.000 --> 01:04:30.410 - the Wes Jacksons and the Mary Ann Motts who've been involved in talking about these issues for 20 years, 01:04:30.410 --> 01:04:31.934 - who have offered 01:04:32.322 --> 01:04:42.569 - sane green business strategies for getting more of these healthy foods and products into the marketplace. 01:04:42.569 --> 01:04:52.333 - It was not a bunch of tree huggers and wackos that dominated either Seattle or Genoa. And so I think 01:04:52.333 --> 01:04:59.294 - I'm sort of a slow learner on this stuff that there's many, many people 01:04:59.714 --> 01:05:07.650 - both on this continent and other continents, way far ahead of me. And I think we're simply devoting 01:05:07.650 --> 01:05:14.078 - more and more time and intellectual concern to how to resolve this dilemma. Yes? 01:05:48.930 --> 01:06:01.164 - Yeah. You know, we're not really good at convincing even our family and closest friends that McDonald's 01:06:01.164 --> 01:06:13.163 - is a cruddy deal on intellectual grounds. I mean, probably the least likely person to be convinced of 01:06:13.163 --> 01:06:16.574 - this stuff is my own mother. 01:06:18.914 --> 01:06:28.818 - and probably your dorm colleagues. And I don't think we convince people about this issue by ideological 01:06:28.818 --> 01:06:38.436 - fervor alone. The thing that has brought more people back into using the native seeds, the vegetable 01:06:38.436 --> 01:06:47.006 - seeds that we've saved through Native Seed Search, a nonprofit I started 18 years ago, is 01:06:47.522 --> 01:06:56.337 - the taste and the textures and the gorgeous colors of these things, not the idea of biodiversity conservation 01:06:56.337 --> 01:07:04.350 - or conservation of germplasm. I mean, if germplasm, it sounds like something you want to use Bactin 01:07:04.350 --> 01:07:12.603 - on. The point is that we need to convince people of the sensual pleasures of these things, of exposing 01:07:12.603 --> 01:07:14.206 - them to it, so that 01:07:14.786 --> 01:07:23.266 - McDonald's seems so boring to them that they just walk by it. And that's what's happening in Italy with 01:07:23.266 --> 01:07:31.502 - the slow food movement. They even got the pope to say that fast food is anti-Christian. I mean, this 01:07:31.502 --> 01:07:39.657 - is a great thing, that we're meant to eat in communion with one another slowly, considerately, with 01:07:39.657 --> 01:07:43.326 - reverence for our food, so that fast food is 01:07:43.810 --> 01:07:52.515 - You know, it's a bad deal. I mean, the other comparison that I like that you can try it on your dorm 01:07:52.515 --> 01:08:01.306 - mates, and I was horrified when I saw this, that I'd actually been quoted in Dr. Dean Adell's book on 01:08:01.306 --> 01:08:10.011 - health and diet on this. I can't believe I actually let this slip out of my mouth. Fast food is like 01:08:10.011 --> 01:08:12.510 - quick sex. It makes you feel 01:08:13.378 --> 01:08:22.987 - satisfied for about three seconds, and then you spend about another four years feeling guilty about 01:08:22.987 --> 01:08:32.885 - it. I mean, it's just not satisfying in any real sense of that term. And so you can use some analogies 01:08:32.885 --> 01:08:42.398 - like that. Don't say that it came from me, or don't imply that you've had a lot of experience with 01:08:42.722 --> 01:08:51.541 - quick sex so that you know what you're talking about, but, you know, get it across to your buddies. 01:08:51.541 --> 01:09:00.624 - Oh, well. Any other questions? I just want to honor all the many things that you all are doing in this 01:09:00.624 --> 01:09:09.531 - community, not only the Simply Living Fair, but a great and vital farmers market, the radio stations 01:09:09.531 --> 01:09:10.942 - and newspapers, 01:09:11.458 --> 01:09:20.153 - that have covered the fair and had offered interviews about this topic. It's such wonderful people whose 01:09:20.153 --> 01:09:28.517 - hearts are in the right places, such intelligence that I really honor all of you who've devoted time 01:09:28.517 --> 01:09:36.964 - to these efforts and hope that the fair this weekend will inspire you to commit yourselves in an even 01:09:36.964 --> 01:09:41.022 - deeper way to these issues. Thank you very much.