Where Our Food Comes From

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 countrys 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 scientistand vivid storytellerhas retraced his footsteps. In Where Our Food Comes From, Gary Paul Nabhan weaves together Vavilovs extraordinary story with his own expeditions to Earths richest agricultural landscapes and the cultures that tend them. Retracing Vavilovs 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 Vavilovs time and why they matter.