Alex McAlvay

Remembering resilience: Drawing on traditional agricultural practices to climate-proof our crops

Friday, February 16th

5:00 pm

951 EXT Schermerhorn Hall

Abstract:

Food security depends on the ability of crops to tolerate new environmental stresses. Dr. Alex McAlvay will share his new and ongoing projects in Ethiopia, Canada, and Eurasia related to the investigation and revitalization of traditional practices and crops with potential as climate-smart farming strategies. This work, undertaken from ethnobotanical, ecological, and evolutionary perspectives, often brushes up against archaeology. He will share about his work with archaeologists on First Nations forest gardens in the Pacific Northwest—forests associated with archaeological village sites that humans have enriched for wild edible plant species. He will share his work on the ancient strategy of planting maslins, or mixtures of multiple grain species, which were formerly widespread in Eurasia and northern Africa, and continues to be employed by smallholder farmers in some parts of the world, where it may represent a risk management strategy for climate variability. Finally, he will share his work on the domestication of Brassica species—which flourished under the care of ancient humans who turned them into a panoply of globally important vegetables through breeding.