Book Review

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

Author: Gary Paul Nabhan

In Where Our Food Comes From, Gary Paul Nabhan writes about the life and journey of Russian scientist Nikolay Vavilov. The Forward describes the book “as a biography not only of Vavilov but also as a biography of the very agricultural systems that informed the birth of agricultural genetics”. Vavilov collected and documented great diversity in not only seeds, but also cultures. People all over the world were found breeding crops to gain diversity. The diversity in crops is needed if we are going to sustain food production in our fast changing global environment. In addition to all of Vavilov’s journeys, Nabhan revisits some of the same places Vavilov had gone a few decades prior. Each chapter is filled with Vavilov’s experiences and findings then followed by Nabhan’s own. Having the two views shows how things were, what has occurred since Vavilov was there, and the changes that are being made by the farmers, organizations, and the government to ensure sustainable food production for the future.

The first chapter, The Art Museum and the Seed Bank, provides a history into what Vavilov had accomplished over his life. The seed bank in St. Petersburg, Russia still stands today housing the largest collection of seeds and plants.  He had identified and mapped the hotspots of diversity before others. His observations of these hotspots are well documented in journals and with photos. He tells the conditions seeds needed to grow. With these observations it is obvious how much the climate has changed over nine decades.

Melting Glaciers and Waves of Grain: The Pamirs, gets into Vavilov’s travels and his goal to collect the range of food diversity on all five continents. He was one of the first to recognize the Pamir highlands as a natural laboratory for crop evolution and resilience. Here the glaciers play an important role in agriculture. The glaciers are a source for irrigation and with their rapid decline it is a cause of great concern.

Drought and the Decline of Variety: The Po Valley. The Po Valley in Italy was home to one of the most sophisticated irrigation agriculture in Europe. Today there are over sixteen million inhabitants in that area fed from crops being irrigated by these technologies. Now these technologies are causing serious damage and environmental problems. Nabhan writes about the droughts that not only affect the crops, but also the electricity generated by hydropower.

From Breadbasket to Basket Case: The Levant. This are of the Middle East is known as the Fertile Crescent. It is considered to be here where agriculture had begun. During Vavilov’s and Nabhan’s visits to this region the area was heavy with war. Drought resistant wheat was the focus of Vavilov’s attention.

This book kept my interest because it gives a historical and current point of view. The comparisons of how places used to be and are now make the changes occurring in our global environment real. Crops and all plants are being homogenized all over the world not just here in the U.S where we grow basically one type of a certain crop per field. We are rapidly losing the diversity that allows for mutations to occur naturally to fight off drought, insects, and a number of other things. I liked how Nabhan included what native farmers and others are doing to keep the diversity of their crops alive for future generations. Without the diversity our food supply will not be able to provide for the number of people living on Earth.