Ethnobotonist Gary Paul Nabhan is following food resilience in the desert Southwest.
By Aaron Kagan
Gary Paul Nabhan wears many hats, but when we recently spoke in his hometown of Patagonia, Arizona, he had on a khaki ball cap emblazoned with a caricature of a horned toad.
An ethnobotanist by trade, Nabhan is an enthusiastic desert dweller and a research scientist at the Southwest Center at the University of Arizona, where he helps run the program Sabores Sin Fronteras, aka Flavors Without Borders, a multi-cultural alliance dedicated to preserving and promoting the foods and culture of the U.S.-Mexican borderlands. He has written and co-written several books including a history of tequila and a guide to foraging for wild edibles such as “sand food” in the Sonoran desert. He also founded Renewing America’s Food Traditions, or RAFT, a group that champions endangered, place-based foods such as Meech’s Prolific quince and the eulachon, a fish with an oil content so high it can be dried and used as a candle.
