Liz Carlisle’s Living Roots Book Launch

Liz Carlisle’s Living Roots makes the case for putting perennial foods at the center of our farms and our plates, to add flavor and nutrients to our diets while reducing emissions and making our food system more resilient to climate change and economic uncertainty.

With contributions from James Beard Award-winning chefs, Macarthur genius grant-winning scientists, and a host of farmers who are leading the way on perennializing agriculture, the book takes readers on a behind-the-scenes tour of the largest urban food forest in the United States, the test plots developing the first commercial perennial grains, and the vast grasslands where Indigenous communities are returning bison to their prairie homelands. In the process, each contributor shares their unique story of learning with these long-lived plants about how to root deeper in the face of existential challenges, speaking directly to readers charting their own path on a rapidly changing planet.

Liz Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. Born and raised in Montana, she got hooked on agriculture while working as an aide to organic farmer and U.S. Senator Jon Tester, which led to a decade of research and writing collaborations with farmers in her home state. She has written three books about regenerative and organic farming: Lentil Underground, Grain by Grain, and Healing Grounds, and she is co-editor of the new edited collection Living Roots: The Promise of Perennial Foods. Prior to her career as a writer and academic, she spent several years touring rural America as a country singer.