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Agrobiodiversity and Resilience

Assigned Reading:

Please read the brief "introduction to the reading" below and then the following pages from Gary Nabhan's book "Where Our Food Comes From":

Nabhan, G.P. "Rediscovering America and Surviving the Dust Bowl: The U. S. Southwest ", p. 129-138, part of Chapter 9, Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine. Washington: Island Press.

Introduction to the reading: The reading describes part of a much longer account of travels by Vavilov (for whom the Vavilov centers of agrobiodiversity are named, see the previous page in the book, and module 2.1 in this course) from 1929 to 1934 in North America. During this trip, the Russian crop researcher met with U.S. researchers as well as "keepers" of U.S. native agrobiodiversity. This chapter describes Vavilov's trip to the Hopi Indians in 1930, in which he and the U.S. scientists were able to observe firsthand the seed systems and their resilience to the drought that was currently going on in the United States. The author of the book, Gary Nabhan, relates this account of the visit and then compares it to similar visits he made to the Hopi in the more recent past. This compiled history of seed systems and their relation to both human and natural system changes in the U.S. Southwest is a sort of case study, from which the assessment worksheet will ask you to draw conclusions.

Download Worksheet ( 148kB Jan3 18)

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This exercise requires you to fill in some of the blanks in the worksheet ( 148kB Jan3 18) based on the reading.

1. Two of the shocks that the Hopi food system has been exposed to have already been filled in on the worksheet, the main one being periodic drought. Within the human system box, fill in some of the agricultural methods (ways of growing food) described by Nabhan that represent adaptive capacity to drought shocks.
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   Deep planting of crops to capture moisture, spring-fed terraces, stream-side fields to capture flood moisture.
2. In the natural system box, fill in how agrobiodiversity and their seed systems also represented adaptive capacity of the Hopi against drought.
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   Diverse crops adapted to local conditions, local seed saving so that seeds were not lost, tree crops and edible wild plant gathering to supplement diet.
3. During the more recent drought, Nabhan states that an additional climatic factor related to climate change tended to worsen the effects of drought. What was this? Place it in the additional shock box at the lower edge of the diagram.
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   Hotter summer temperatures due to climate change.
4. A shock that emerged from the human system was the pumping of groundwater for coal mining and coal slurry transport in the region. What was the vulnerability to drought in the local natural system that this water extraction created? Fill it in in the "vulnerabilities" box in the natural system part of the diagram.
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   Pumping of groundwater for coal mining dries out springs and reduces the availability of spring water for irrigated terraces.
5. In the last part of the chapter, Nabhan notes first a social/cultural vulnerability that has emerged in recent times. What is this social vulnerability? Note it in the vulnerability space of the Human System rectangle.
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   Shift toward salaried work in cities by young people within the community.
6. Nabhan also notes a new social adaptive capacity that has arisen to challenge this vulnerability. What is this newest change that gives Nabhan hope about the fate of Hopi seed and agricultural systems?
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   Hopi organizations that seek to revitalize farming traditions and the Hopi food system.
7. Of the three shocks now documented in the diagram, to which one would the Hopi knowledge system and adaptive capacity been most exposed to over recent centuries? Answer in one sentence.
   
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   Likely, drought would have been a recurrent shock with which Hopi knowledge systems and adaptive capacity would have been familiar.
8. Compare the level of success the Hopi food system had in adapting to the older, better-known shock you chose in (7), in comparison to the other two shocks, at least during the last thirty years. (3-4 sentences, this may make the page run over to the next).
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   It was more challenging to adapt to these later shocks – their effects may have been unfamiliar based on long experience, and also they tend to affect not just production but the very means of existing adaptive capacity, for example limiting the effectiveness of known farming strategies (e.g. spring-fed terraces) or the entire knowledge system from which the Hopi drew their adaptive capacity. (some version of the above is acceptable as an answer: explain that it is more challenging and some reference to why that was so)