Growing Food in a Hotter Drier Land - Gary Paul Nabhan

How to harvest water and nutrients select drought-tolerant plants and create natural diversity Because climatic uncertainty has now become the new normal many farmers, gardeners and orchard-keepers in North America are desperately seeking ways to adapt their food production to become more resilient in the face of such global weirding. This book draws upon the wisdom and technical knowledge from desert farming traditions all around the world to offer time-tried strategies for: Building greater moisture-holding capacity and nutrients in soils Protecting fields from damaging winds drought and floods Harvesting water from uplands to use in rain gardens and terraces filled with perennial crops Delecting fruits nuts succulents and herbaceous perennials that are best suited to warmer drier climates Gary Paul Nabhan is one of the world's experts on the agricultural traditions of arid lands. For this book he has visited indigenous and traditional farmers in the Gobi Desert the Arabian Peninsula the Sahara Desert and Andalusia as well as the Sonoran Chihuahuan and Painted deserts of North America to learn firsthand their techniques and designs aimed at reducing heat and drought stress on orchards fields and dooryard gardens. This practical book also includes colorful parables from the field that exemplify how desert farmers think about increasing the carrying capacity and resilience of the lands and waters they steward. It is replete with detailed descriptions and diagrams of how to implement these desert-adapted practices in your own backyard orchard or farm. This unique book is useful not only for farmers and permaculturists in the arid reaches of the Southwest or other desert regions. Its techniques and prophetic vision for achieving food security in the face of climate change may well need to be implemented across most of North America over the next half-century and are already applicable in most of the semiarid West Great Plains and the U.S. Southwest and adjacent regions of Mexico.

TITLE: Growing Food in a Hotter Drier Land

AUTHOR: Gary Paul Nabhan

SKU: 9781603584531

PUBLISHER: Chelsea Green Publishing Co

DATE PUBLISHED: 15/07/2013

PLACE PUBLISHED: United States

PAGES: 272

BINDING: Paperback / softback

LANGUAGE: English

DIMENSIONS: 178 mm x 254 mm