Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine
by Gary Paul Nabhan
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The future of our food depends on tiny seeds in orchards and fields the world over. In 1943, one of the first to recognize this fact, the great botanist Nikolay Vavilov, lay dying of starvation in a Soviet prison. But in the years before Stalin jailed him as a scapegoat for the country's famines, Vavilov had traveled over five continents, collecting hundreds of thousands of seeds in an effort to outline the ancient centers of agricultural diversity and guard against widespread hunger. Now, show more another remarkable scientist-and vivid storyteller-has retraced his footsteps. In Where Our Food Comes Fr show lessTags
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This really two books in one, both required reading on the subject of crop diversity and its importance to food security. The first is the incredible biography of N. I. Vavilov, the Stalin-era Russian plant scientist who traveled five continents studying crop diversity and collecting seeds for the first modern seed bank. The second is Nabhan's retracing of some of Vavilov's travels and commenting how the changes he is seeing illustrate how climate change, economics, and genetic engineering are affecting the world's food supplies.
Nabhan is a scientist as well as a great storyteller and travel writer, telling a fascinating tale that matters.
Nabhan is a scientist as well as a great storyteller and travel writer, telling a fascinating tale that matters.
Interesting.
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Author Information
56+ Works 2,284 Members
He is a prize-winning author & naturalist, lives in Tucson, where he is director of conservation biology at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum & cofounder of Native Seeds/Search. (Bowker Author Biography)
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- Members
- 115
- Popularity
- 282,819
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.45)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 2
