Within the last decade, tremendous changes have occurred in America’s food production, distribution and consumption. Just take a second to look back to what you ate and what you could not afford to eat at the turn of the millennium, in January of 2000.
Nowhere is this change more evident than in the food- producing landscapes in the Southwestern borderland states of Arizona and New Mexico, where both positive and detrimental changes have occurred. These changes not only affect human health, but the health of land as well.

The health of foodsheds and watersheds are in many ways analogous: Unless food and water source areas “upstream” are sustained and sometimes restored, the health and wealth of “downstream” users may be compromised. Of course, in the semi-arid and arid Southwest, since food security in our arid region is so dependent upon water availability, the fate of our foodsheds is highly dependent upon the health of watersheds. And yet, few of us go out into the field frequently enough to give them a “health check.”

You are about to go on a field inspection of Southwestern foodsheds.

The essays and commentary in “The State of Southwestern Foodsheds” are like field reports, written from various points along the Southwest’s “food streams” that run from farms and ranches in the hinterlands and from gardens hidden inside cities, to food banks, soup kitchens, restaurants, college food services and school cafeterias in our metropolitan areas, villages and towns.

These essays provide us with a health report of the land and people of the arid and semi-arid southwest, and help us gauge whether various elements of our food system have improved or deteriorated over the last decade.