Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods

Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods
Book Talk, Signing & Dinner

Thursday April 9, 5-7pm
Bowers Auditorium, Sage Hall 205 Prospect St, New Haven, CT
Yale School of the Environment

Everyone Welcome – Please Register Here

• Liz Carlisle – Associate Professor, University of California Santa Barbara. Author, Healing Grounds and The Lentil Underground,
• Aubrey Streit Krug – Perennial Cultures Lab Director, The Land Institute
• Leah Penniman – Co-Founder and Co-Director, Soul Fire Farm
• Piyush Labhsetwar – Land Stewardship Manager, Grow Food Northampton

Join us for an evening of storytelling and community to celebrate the new book, Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods. We will be joined by both of the book’s co-editors, Liz Carlisle and Aubrey Streit Krug, and two of the book’s contributors, Leah Penniman and Piyush Labhsetwar.

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.

Living Roots incorporates perspectives from experts across numerous backgrounds and lived experiences to examine the promise of perennial foods with deep roots such as perennial grains, indigenous food forests, fruit trees, nuts, berries, and more for sustaining communities and protecting the health of our shared planet. 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.

Co-editors Liz and Aubrey will introduce the book, the topic of perennial crops, and facilitate this conversation. Topics will include discussion of the Afro-Indigenous agroforest and perennial crops growing at Soul Fire Farm and the significance of trees in Black liberation movements. We will also hear about the pawpaw trees and perennial wheat at Grow Food Northampton, the impacts of flooding, and the importance of movement and migration in creating resilient landscapes and communities, among many other wonderful things…

Hosted by: Wyss Scholars, People, Equity and the Environment Learning Community, The Land Institute, YSE Community Engagement and Speaker Funds, Graduate and Professional Student Senate, CBEY, and the Roots, Food/Ag & EJAY Student Interest Groups. Books will be sold by Possible Futures Books. Dinner by A Pinch of Salt, Chef Raquel Rivera.