From buffalo prairies to urban orchards, an introduction to a diverse movement redefining how we grow, eat, and live with the land
Just four annual crops-corn, wheat, rice, and soybeans-account for 75% of the calories consumed by people. We are missing out on a tremendous bounty of perennial foods-foods that can not only enrich our diets but help heal the land and combat climate change. By investing energy in robust root systems rather than just annual growth, perennial food plants endure year after year, pointing the way to a more resilient future.
In Living Roots, a passionate group of experts from wide-ranging backgrounds and lived experience come together to explore the promise of perennial foods. In this book, you'll hear from Indigenous scientists and community leaders who are working to restore buffalo prairies and traditions of berry gathering. You'll also hear from urban visionaries planting food forests; farmers planting fruit and nut trees between their crops and hedgerows at the edges of their fields; ranchers stewarding healthier grasslands by grazing livestock in patterns that mimic the behavior of native herbivores; and scientists and farmers who are developing perennial grains, from sorghum to silphium.
These efforts are wildly diverse, much like a healthy forest or prairie. We will need each of them, and the power of perennials, to protect the planet we all share. Living Roots is a vital introduction to this burgeoning movement and an invaluable resource for sustainable farming advocates and everyone who cares about the future of food. Liz Carlisle is associate professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. She has written three books about regenerative farming and agroecology: Lentil Underground, Grain by Grain (with Bob Quinn), and Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. Aubrey Streit Krug is a writer, teacher, and researcher who studies human-plant relationships and the connection between cultural and agricultural change. She is director of the Perennial Cultures Lab at The Land Institute. "Living Roots is a chorus of hymns to our relationship to the land and, through it, to the rest of the web of life. Together, these voices call us away from the loneliness of extraction and back toward reciprocity, memory, and care. Moving through forest, grassland, and grain, this book reminds us that perennial foods are more than a technique: they are a different way of belonging to the earth. Rooted in Indigenous stewardship and alive to the urgencies of climate, justice, and survival, Living Roots is both witness and invitation: to live, at last, as if our future depends on the lives around us."---Raj Patel, filmmaker and author of Stuffed & Starved "I read Living Roots cover to cover over two days. But you can just as easily pick this book up and dive into the essay that happens to take your fancy. Each one will take you to a good place where there is hope for food, for us and the planet."---Marianne Landzettel, Slow Food in the UK
