Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine

by Gary Paul Nabhan

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, another remarkable scientist—and vivid storyteller—has retraced his footsteps.
 
In Where Our Food Comes From, Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together Vavilov’s extraordinary story with his own expeditions to Earth’s richest agricultural landscapes and the cultures that tend them. Retracing Vavilov’s path from Mexico and the Colombian Amazon to the glaciers of the Pamirs in Tajikistan, he draws a vibrant portrait of changes that have occurred since Vavilov’s time and why they matter.
 
In his travels, Nabhan shows how climate change, free trade policies, genetic engineering, and loss of traditional knowledge are threatening our food supply. Through discussions with local farmers, visits to local outdoor markets, and comparison of his own observations in eleven countries to those recorded in Vavilov’s journals and photos, Nabhan reveals just how much diversity has
already been lost. But he also shows what resilient farmers and scientists in many regions are doing to save the remaining living riches of our world.
 
It is a cruel irony that Vavilov, a man who spent his life working to foster nutrition, ultimately died from lack of it. In telling his story, Where Our Food Comes From brings to life the intricate relationships among culture, politics, the land, and the future of the world’s food.

Genres: Nonfiction, Food, History, Science, Agriculture, Environment, Travel

223 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2008

About the author

Gary Paul Nabhan is an internationally-celebrated nature writer, seed saver, conservation biologist and sustainable agriculture activist who has been called "the father of the local food movement" by Utne Reader, Mother Earth News, Carleton College and Unity College. Gary is also an orchard-keeper, wild forager and Ecumenical Franciscan brother in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona near the Mexican border. For his writing and collaborative conservation work, he has been honored with a MacArthur "genius" award, a Southwest Book Award, the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, the Vavilov Medal, and lifetime achievement awards from the Quivira Coalition and Society for Ethnobiology.

--from the author's website

Reviews

[Bernard Lavallée · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am interested in agricultural biodiversity and I have seen Vavilov's name many times in the books I read on the subject. I was eager to learn about this man and his incredible work. However, the book was more about the author's experience while following Vavilov's path, and about the importance of preserving agrobiodiversity than about Vavilov himself. I still enjoyed the book and will definitely keep some insights for my work.

[محمد المغازي]

الكتاب بيحتوي على كذا حاجة، يعني مقارنة (عن طريق رحلة بيقوم بها الكاتب و هي مشابهة تقريبا لرحلة العالم الروسي الشهير نيكولاي فافيلوف) بين الأمس االقريب و الحاضر، قرن فقط يفصل بين ما كان و ما أصبحت عليه الطبيعة. وشرح بسيط لكيف تعامل البشر في بقاع مختلفة حول الأرض مع أزمات الغذاء والنُدرة على مدار التاريخ. وبيشير ويشيد أيضا بجهود العلماء المكافحين في مجال الزراعة اللي طبعا واسع للغاية و مليان هو الآخر صراعات شديدة للحفاظ على أنواع كتيرة ( التنوع ) من الانقراض. و بيلمح في أوقات كتيرة و المؤلف راجل عالم في المجال الزراعي أصلا لدور الاستعمار و الرأسمالية و الثقافة الاستهلاكية في تدمير التنوع الزاعي لصالح مكاسب أسرع وأضمن على المدى القصير فقط.

كتاب حلو ومهم ورحلة غريبة عليا شخصيا، ونقلت للواحد لمحة وعي عن حاجات مكنش يعرف عنها شيء تقريبا.

[Tinwerume · Rating 1 out of 5]

Here's a quote from chapter 1:

No biotechnology can “invent” or replace the genetic variability already present in the diverse seeds found in the fields of local farmers scattered around the world; we have barely begun to classify those seeds on morphological grounds, let alone understand their genetic relationships and potential uses. Whether or not biotechnologies will be used in developing new seed strains, those locally adapted seed varieties—which continue to be dynamically bred and selected by peasant farmers as they have for millennia—will remain the primary wellspring of—or “gene pool” for—all future crop improvement efforts.

If this quote appeals to you, you might enjoy this book.

[Sujana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing! Absolutely engaging and informative. WOFCF is a book about food security, farmer's rights, and the pioneering effort of the Russian scientist and geneticist Nikolai Vavilov, who traveled to nine major "Centers of Biodiversity" and collected several seed varieties from local farmers and agriculturalists. The book is written descriptively and includes many facts and information on the state of natural habitats and seed diversity. Nabhan has written a biography of this man in a smooth story-telling style. I highly recommend this interesting, provocative book.

[Kellen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Challenging to finish. Very dry and repetitive—essentially 13 chapters all with the same conclusion that seed and food diversity is good and in jeopardy. For a book that prizes the work of “vernacular plant breeders” (i.e., small traditional farmers) there is a serious lack of their voices in this story. I found Vavilov’s biography very interesting but he mostly disappears from the middle of the book. I wish there had been more anthropological engagement.

[Mary Schaefbauer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be both a gripping tale and very informative with lots of tidbits about biodiversity and cultivation. I really appreciate the author's emphasis on the critical importance (which Vavilov embraced) of relying on the understanding and expertise of local/indigenous people to understand the full scope of a plant's genetics and provenance, and likewise relying on the farmers out in the field each day to selectively breed varieties that will survive our changing climate.

[Caleb Reske · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book. Audiobook listeners be warned - this book has one of the worst narrators I have ever encountered. I believe the print version has lots of maps/graphs that are really helpful as well, so seriously consider reading this one on paper.

[Melanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was interested in this book for two reasons, both for its theme of agricultural biodiversity and for the part that Russian scientist Nikolay Vavilov plays in this story. I was not disappointed! Nabhan is an ethnobotanist, conservationist, farmer, and a prolific author, with many other titles I now want to read as well. In this book he's decided he will follow in the footsteps of Vavilov and see how agricultural biodiversity has changed since Vavilov's world travels in the early 1900's.


Nikolay Vavilov was a Russian scientist with a massive case of wanderlust and a brilliant mind. He was head of the Russian Department of Applied Botany and travelled around the world in the early years of the last century, researching seeds and local farming practices, and developing a theory of genetic plant origins known as Vavilov Centres of Diversity, still used in scientific circles. He was gathering plant genetic material for his comprehensive seed bank in Leningrad, the first in the world, intended to stockpile seed to avert worldwide famine in case of any regional crop failures. The seed bank suffered under the Siege of Leningrad in WWII -- while the Hermitage had all of its art treasures removed and protected elsewhere, the seed bank was left to its own devices. Stalin felt that the science being done there was elitist and not for the good of the people, and he also held a personal grudge against Vavilov. The scientists of the Department barricaded themselves inside the seed bank to protect it against the starving citizens of Leningrad, with one of the researchers actually dying of starvation in the midst of all the seeds. Vavilov himself was finally sent to a work camp by Stalin, where he died of starvation.


Gary Paul Nabhan retraces the wide ranging travels of Vavilov in order to measure the status of local agriculture and genetic diversity remaining in the areas Vavilov studied nearly a hundred years ago. What he found was that in most places, genetic diversity has diminished as agriculture has become more top-down: governments and organizations trying to increase crop yields neglected traditional farming practices and acclimatized seeds, and bought in to a Westernized, "scientific" method of using genetically modified and/or heavily pesticide reliant new crops. He makes a strong case for the necessity of returning to old folkways in growing and marketing local food sources.


Each chapter of the book takes him to a different locale, from North and South America, to Ethiopia, to Kazhakstan, among many others. It reads like an intriguing combination of biography and travel writing, alongside the fascinating science behind biodiversity and its ties to cultural diversity. Not only does he make a strong case for the necessity of crop diversity from the perspective of a secure world food supply, he also makes an emotional appeal: the beauty and the individuality of the many regions of the world he visits need agricultural security to remain distinct civilizations. Consider this locale -- would we want to lose this forever?

The fragrance of the Kazakh forest was unlike any I have ever known, for the pervasive smell of ripening and rotting apples and pears filled my nostrils. At my feet, russet reds, blushing pinks, vibrant roses, and creamy yellows mottled the ground, where wildlife had half consumed many of the fruit that make this forest so bountiful. I had arrived in the place that was the ultimate source of the apples and pears I had eaten since childhood, a place I had tried to imagine since I first read about these "wild apple forests" while still a student many years ago.


He details the many ways humanity gets in our own way when it comes to sustaining our food supplies. One of these things is war, as he recognizes when he visits Lebanon, where his family comes from.
Another way we imperil crop diversity is through meddling with plants from an economic, corporate standpoint. GMO corn has greatly affected Mexican crops, including the original mother of all corn varities, teosinte. This is more than an environmental problem, it is a cultural one, as indigenous groups identify their culture, their spirituality, with their original maize varieties.

This book is extremely readable: fascinating locales, heartbreaking biography and political machinations, and some beautiful photos. Reading it provides so much compelling scientific evidence of the ever increasing importance of being aware of just where our food comes from. Highly recommended.

Full review

[AHMED ALHASHMI · Rating 4 out of 5]

يأخذنا الكتاب في رحلة شيقة عبر علم الأحياء النباتية وتنوع المحاصيل الغذائية، مع التركيز على مسيرة العالم الروسي نيكولاي ڤاڤيلوڤ.

[Dena Bass]

Having just read City of Thieves and listened to a Hard Core History Podcast about Stalin and Hitler - was interested this book because evidently Vavilov and his "people" guarded seeds and grains with their lives during the siege of St Petersburg.

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a topic I was particularly interested in before picking up this book, but I was pleasantly surprised by the information and storytelling presented. I appreciate a book about a dedicated and little-known (at least to me) scientists, their sacrifices, and their dedication to their work.

[Cat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nabhan is a vivid, engaging writer. I love that he is an ethnobotanist, so he is just as interested in indigenous cultures, historical foodways, and linguistic circulation as he is in plant breeding, genetic resistance to diseases and climate variation, and landrace histories. In fact, he really shows how these studies are interconnected and inextricable if we're going to think sustainability and futurity on both human and ecological planes. In this volume, Nabhan claims as his predecessor and model the Russian botanist Nikolai Vavilav, the founder of the Vavilov Plant Institute, which heroic scientists saved in the siege of Leningrad--eight of the botanists dying in their dedication to preserve these edible seeds for the future. Elise Blackwell's Hunger is a gorgeous fictionalization of this harrowing historical incident. Nabhan honors both Vavilov and his colleagues, and he takes pains to explain the anti-science attitude of Stalin's totalitarian regime and its ultimately fatal consequences for Vavilov. Mostly, however, he focuses on the years before this tragic end, retracing Vavilov's journey to centers of biodiversity and registering the current conditions in these environments. Some of his anecdotes are moving (the indigenous Hopi and their varieties of maize); others are disturbing (the Amazonian rainforest cleared for narcos); and all are sensitive to the human element of crop development, seed exchange, and biodiversity. Nabhan has faith in indigenous cultures and working farmers as sources of agricultural knowledge and plant breeding novelty. He is less convinced that GMOs developed by biotech firms will respond to the demands of the local environment. He does a beautiful job explaining that famine is intimately connected to the global conditions of colonialism--Ethiopian famine in the 1980s coming about in part because the French colonizers sponsored mulberry stands to support the profitable export business of the silk industry. As much as Nabhan spends most of his volume talking about the astonishing variety of cultivation that he sees in these regions of biodiversity (like the "humanized forests" in the Amazonian and their semi-cultivated orchards), he also hammers home the crucial lesson for environmentalists and global citizens writ large, which is that political turmoil, the consequences of colonialism or the repercussions of global war, threatens our agricultural and biological capital. He advocates the idea of a "food democracy," celebrating not just seed banks as a repository for genetic diversity but rather the circulation and development of seeds by small farmers with a cultural tradition and encompasses these crops and a savviness about the changing environment around them--often very different as in the Kazakh mountains of Central Asia where the cold-weather crops move further and further north up the mountains each year.

[Matthew Gibb · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is about a passionate biologist who set out to amass a collection of all the different seeds in the world to save it from Monoculture by understanding diversity and hybridization. His ideas were great and he was well recieved wherever he went and he was good at several languages. He truly wanted to help his country and the world. His nemesis, Lukashenka, tarnished Vavilov's reputation despite being and inferior scientist. He had the full respect of Stalin,who only wanted to show that his country was overcoming famine with greater stores of a small number of crops grown quickly, even though they lacked the quality of the ones Vavilov was working on. Ironically, Vavilov was jailed as an enemy of the state and died of starvation in prison. I wanted to stop this audiobook and look up the numerous words for various indigenous crops mentioned, but the spelling would possibly have been wrong at times. Better to read this one and look up the words to find pictures on line to fully appreciate this martyr's honest and passionate work.

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well described adventures. A clarion call to protect and preserve what little genetic diversity remains.
"No biotechnology can “invent” or replace the genetic variability already present in the diverse seeds found in the fields of local farmers and scattered around the world; we have barely begun to classify those seeds on morphological grounds, let alone understand the genetic relationships and potential uses. Whether or not biotechnologies will be used in developing new seed strains, those locally adopted seed varieties—which continue to be dynamically bred and selected by peasant farmers as they have for millennia--will remain the primary wellspring of, or 'gene pool' for—all future crop improvement efforts."

[Alina Yasnaya · Rating 4 out of 5]

More of an expanded biography of Vavilov along with the information about how important it is for us to keep biodiversity alive. The devastating fact that the dying, starving botanists in Leningrad under the nazi siege continued guarding the plant specimens from being pillaged by the desperate hungry people was not known to me. The seige lasted 872 days and caused an unbelievable loss of life from hunger because any food delivery was bombed by the nazis. Vavilov's colleagues, barely alive, knew how important it was to protect the biological resources that would prevent famine in the future.

The book is very useful, if at times heartbreaking.

[. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This isn't a biography of a Vavilov, but instead it's explored in what I'd consider 3 parts: First Nabhan goes through a brief bio of Vavilov, setting the stage for the methodology, reasoning, and course of Vavilov's studies. Second, he elaborates on what Vavilov saw as he traveled the globe. Third, he elaborates on what he saw in those same places several decades later.

His approach brings not only understanding, but urgency. As a species, we have to do a better job protecting and cultivating the food we've thrived on for millennia.

[Mary Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly timely book to show how we can feed the world if we only have the courage to trust indigenous peoples and their way of growing and preserving food and the next years' seeds. A must read and will be a reread for me soon.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history of one of the greats in seed banking and food sustainability

[Randy Cherland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nabhan's writing let's the reader flow through the book effortlessly, if you are interested in agriculture or gardening this is a must read!

[Marc Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating story of seed collection

Basically a biography of Vavilov, which I didn’t expect given the title

Yet another reason to hate Stalin (though Nabhan lays it on a bit thick)

[Elizabeth AcesoUnderGlass · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too worshipful of imaginary past practices

[Mohamed Al-ibrahim · Rating 4 out of 5]

قصة ممتازه عن بافلوف و رحلته حول العالم و الحبوب

[Licho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nikolay Vavilov is an underappreciated name in history. Everything that the man accomplished to help support food networks in his home country and abroad are truly astounding. While this book focuses more on Vavilov’s travels and the effects of bio diversity on foodways instead of the minutiae of his life, it’s a wonderful place to start if you’re unfamiliar with the topic.

[Jonna Higgins-Freese]

I had heard of and been fascinated by the idea of "Vavlovian centers" -- areas where agricultural crops were first domesticated from wild crops (wheat in Persia, apples in Kasakhstan, where the forests are apple trees, corn in central America, etc.). Nabhan tells a much more in-depth story of the life and work of Vavilov, a talented scientist, gifted ecologist, and tireless traveler who led over 180 expeditions throughout the world in his quest for varieties (or landraces) of agricultural crops. Driven by scientific curiosity as to the different traits for which local farmers had selected and cultivated the seed, as well as personal passion to find drought- and cold-resistant crops that could forever prevent the famines with which he grew up, Vavilov collected seeds, made detailed notes, created and oversaw a vast (I think hundreds if not thousands) of agricultural stations across Russia where the seeds were tested and grown out, and headed a research center in Leningrad. The story of how he himself was exiled as an intellectual not sufficiently interested in the well-being of the peasants and exiled by Stalin, eventually to starve to death, is heartbreaking, as is the story of how the research center's staff protected the seed stocks throughout the seige of Leningrad, while many of them starved to death themselves rather than eat the collection. Nabhan retraces Vavilov's steps in half a dozen countries, detailing how the wild apple forests of Kasakhstan are falling to urban sprawl in the capital, for example. But overall I found the stories inspiring. While remote Afghan valleys are experiencing vast climate change (glacier retreats and much warmer temperatures at lower altitudes than ever experienced before), farmers have a complex trade network that allows them to buy and sell seed varieties from other valleys and elevations that may work better, and are planting orchards in places they expect to support fruit in twenty years. Ethiopia's farmers still select and rely on teff, a grain of which I'd never heard, which they clung to as a famine-resistant crop in spite of fierce pressure to buy hybrid seeds. Somehow, although the tone is the mildly apocalyptic one of most environmental writing (after all, Nabhan documents that there are far fewer varieties being grown everywhere he went than there were in Vavilov's time, a result of pressures from centralized seed companies and government programs), I found the book hopeful overall. The seeds represent thousands of years of human ingenuity and natural resilience and variety springing up everywhere.

[Psycheinhell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deux guides : Gary Paul Nabhan, et Nikolaï Vavilov. Deux botanistes / ethnobotanistes / phytogénéticiens ? Deux voyageurs, deux collecteurs de graine, deux découvreurs. Des aventuriers de l’arche perdue, en quête des origines géographiques de nos semences, défenseurs des agricultures locales au nom du savoir agricole autochtone.
Le premier chapitre (malgré son écriture un peu désordonnée, ne pas s’arrêter à cela, *surtout pas*), le premier chapitre, donc, fut un choc. Il dit le rêve d’un botaniste né dans la Russie des famines, l’histoire d’une banque de semences sous la Russie soviétique, et l’héroïque préservation d’un patrimoine d’exception en pleine guerre mondiale...
... Et de là, le voyage. Gary Paul Nabhan, lui-même défenseur de l’agriculture locale, spécialiste notamment de la région du désert de Sonora, membre fondateur de la belle organisation Native Seeds/SEARCH, retrace les pas de Vavilov lancé dans le monde à la recherche des hotspots de biodiversité, ces régions reculées qui ont échappé à la tyrannie des monocultures, où survivent et essaiment, couvées par un savoir autochtone, des graines ancestrales, inconnues parfois de la science, endémiques. Des régions où la diversité de plantes et de graines peut se compter en milliers. Fabuleux voyage, qui emmène vers les montagnes du Pamir, ce « Toit du Monde » abritant sous le ciel plus de 5500 variétés de plantes, dont 1500 endémiques ; le jardin d’Eden qu’abrite le Kazakhstan, là où poussent, imaginez un peu, des forêts, ouaip, des forêts entières de pommiers sauvages ; les oasis berbères de palmiers-dattiers, cette perle de verdure dans le désert ; les champs hopis de culture sèche, résilients à la sécheresse, moins résistants à la connerie occidentale qui s’acharna dans son avidité à remplacer l’agriculture locale autarcique en dépendance vis-à-vis de la junk food industrielle ; les cordillères de la Sierra Madre et leurs trésors de maïs – on marche, on marche à fond, et l’esprit s’envole, et les mains rêvent de caresser, égrener, sentir, et la bouche, elle aussi, participe au rêve, dans l’envie de goûter les nourritures locales, les pains de mûre du Pamir, les galettes géantes d’enjera, les déclinaisons mexicaines du maïs…
Et me voilà, au terme du voyage, plantée devant le rayon graines & céréales de mon mag’ bio local, à couver les petits paquets d’un autre regard. Dans le goût d’une graine, savourer, célébrer toute une terre, et la culture qui lui est liée, ah…

[Kate Vane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vavilov was a botanist who travelled the world collecting seed and studying the methods of farmers before his incarceration by Stalin and death by starvation in 1943.

The early part of the book tells his life story and the heroic work by his colleagues to protect his collection during the Siege of Leningrad, planting and harvesting seed even as they starved.

The author then retraces Vavilov’s steps – as far as possible, given the geopolitics – to see what he can learn about his work and what has changed. Along the way we learn a lot about biodiversity, about the skills and local knowledge that farmers have, and the way that economic and political factors shape food production.

The section on the Lebanon is particularly interesting because the author’s family is from there. He describes how the region was turned over to cash crops from the nineteenth century, particularly silk, abandoning its fantastic diversity of food crops. Farmers who had previously been producers of staple foods became consumers. When conflict came, they were unable to get their silk to market and were dependent on imports for food, which led to mass starvation and emigration.

At the time of his visit (the book was published in 2008 so predates the Syrian conflict) there was some cause for optimism as farmers were reintroducing local seed and selling their crops through a network of farmers’ markets.

He also meets with others working in the tradition of Vavilov, for example at the Institute of Biodiversity Conservation in Ethiopia. The institute’s work was given impetus in the 1950s when cross-bred barleys from Ethiopia saved the Californian barley crop from a virus, but Ethiopia got no benefit.

This is an interesting and readable book. The story of Vavilov is fascinating and the author gives you a sense of the man as well as his scientific achievements. It gives an interesting account of the different countries the author visits and the challenges and the ingenuity of those working to protect biodiversity.
*
I received a copy of this book from the publisher via Netgalley.

[Abby]

I've been thinking for a while that I should read something by this Gary Paul Nabhan guy, who shares my interests to an almost creepy extent. And I have aways been completely intrigued by Vavilov, his groundbreaking science and his incredible story. I can still hardly believe how few people have taken advantage of writing about him. So when I discovered there was a book on the implications of Vavilov's work AND it was Nabhan who beat me to it...well, doesn't that just figure.

This book appears to be rather hastily written. This is a shame, considering the amount of effort and research that went into it. Granted, I'm in love with this concept and I've been thinking about it a lot, but I don't feel that Nabhan quite reached the potential his subject offers. Vavilov's life is filled with big dreams, political intrigue, daring exploits and dramatic misadventures. It's also a story rooted in powers of sensory observation, and making full use of descriptors for taste alone could probably double the length of this book. And since Nabhan actually returned to these places, has done his own research there, and knows how modern ideas about crops and genetics have played out in these parts of the world, he could have done real justice to updating Vavilov's work. Instead, his interest seems to peter out after about twelve rambling pages on each location. When he finally gets to the Sierra Madre, I get the feeling that's the book he really wanted to be writing.

In short, I couldn't enjoy this book because I was completely distracted by how I would have written it. I guess I still have my chance.

[Wilfriedhoujebek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nabhan travels in the footsteps of Russian food crop explorer Vavilov and in doing so he gives us a glimpse of how traditional agriculture in the agro-biodiveristy hotspots of the world have changed the last 70-80-90 years. The situation is not good. Where farmers used to rely on many types of crops and many varieties within crops, all with different characteristics for nutrition, drought and blight resistance and ecosystem sensitivity in general, there is now an ever increasing reliance on industrial cultivars. Nabham shows wonderfully well how indigenous farmers use their knowledge of plants and ecosystems to create food security for themselves.
The big problem with this book is that it's written to convince us rather than inform us. It's slow food propaganda disguised as pop science. Vavilov is unduly, and often annoyingly, lionized but the main thing that lets this book down is its failure to back up its main claim. Crop and seed diversity is important for global food security in the (near) future. I believe it but Nabham repeats it so often that it makes you desirous for good evidence and good data that will establish without doubt the casual link between the two. The world is changing and diversity is diminishing and is a bad thing but without elaborating a proper connection between crop diversity and food security the central argument of this book should have been dealt with more critically.

[Dnicebear · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am often drawn to Gary Nabhan's subjects and writing about plants and the land and cultures. I especially love reading about Kazakhstan, birthplace of the Apple. Listen to this: "The fragrance of the Kazakh forest was unlike any I have ever known, for the pervasive smell of ripening and rotting apples and pears filled my nostrils. At my feet, russet reds, blushing, pinks, vibrant roses, and creamy yellows mottled the ground, where wildlife had half consumed many of the fruit that makes this forest so bountiful. I had arrived in the place that was the ultimate source of the apples and pears I had eaten since childhood...."

Nikolay Vavilov gave his life to helping folks appreciate where our food comes from and save seeds. His home government, which had become more totalitarian over the years, blamed seed scarcity on this man and slowly starved him to death (d. January 26, 1943). It became clear to the dying man the ultimate cause of hunger is mostly political: "social, economic and political access to seed diversity at critical moments can make or break a community's means of achieving food security." Nikolay Vavilov's life work of dealing with food security issues and respect for food sources has much to teach us today. Thank you, Mr. Nabhan, for retracing Nikolay Vavilov's mental and physical travels.

[Alix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to be informative and interesting. Nabhan has a great writing style that blends history with the present-day and is very easy to understand and follow. The book was set up very nicely to trace Vavilov's travels in the early 1900s, with the chapters written in this order (the first chapter is all about Vavilov, though, which gives a great basis for the book if you're unfamiliar with this scientist).

Although I have a background in range management and plants (plant evolution), I didn't know a whole lot about agricultural crops going into this book. At the end, I feel as if I understand a whole lot more about historic agricultural crops. In general, the chapters compared what Vavilov found during his travels with what the author found in the same locations 50years later. Each location is addressed, although I found some locations/chapter (particularly chap. 5 - The Levant and chap. 6 - The Maghreb) to be lacking in the present-day detail comparison. Chapters 9 and 10 (US Southwest and Sierra Madre, Mexico) were understandably filled with detail, which I appreciated. These latter chapters really brought out some of the challenges of today. The discussion regarding genetically modified corn in Mexico was especially insightful.

I would have given this book a 4.5 if I could... (I am very stingy with my 5.0s).