MOUNT VERNON — Gary Paul Nabhan, ethnobiologist and author of a book touting the benefits of eating local foods, will speak at 7 p.m. Sunday, March 10, on the second floor of Cole Library on the Cornell College campus. Admission is free.
In “Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods,” Nabhan writes about trying to live for a year on only foods he could hunt, gather or grow within a 250-mile radius of his home west of Tucson, Ariz. He cleared his kitchen of canned and other processed foods; he added to his garden. By word-of-mouth he learned of local residents who raised ducks and geese for eggs; he bartered for tortillas in exchange for his mesquite flour. Neighbors shared the cost of sides of beef from a local ranch.
Nabhan attended Cornell from 1969-1970. He is the recipient of a “genius award” from the MacArthur Foundation and became director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University in fall 2000. The center supports the development of farming across northern Arizona that uses environmentally friendly practices and keeps foods close to home. The center helped publish a directory of 100 bakeries, dairies, restaurants, farmers markets and other businesses with sustainably produced food within a three-hour drive of Flagstaff.
Previously Nabhan was director of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson for nine years. He also co-founded Native Seeds/SEARCH, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve native Southwest crops. Nabhan received the John Burroughs Medal for the best nature book of 1985 for “Gathering the Desert.”
For details on Nabhan and his work, go to www.environment.nau.edu.