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Community-based food cultivation by and for rural Alaskans has never been stronger. Rural gardeners, many Indigenous, provide their families and communities with affordable access to high-quality fruits and vegetables and other locally grown foods. Despite these emerging trends, there is sparse examination of gardening as a complementary, diversification, or adaptation strategy in wild food-centered systems and the interchange of values and worldviews among practices. Findings from interviews and surveys in Dillingham, Alaska, and interviews with community-focused gardens throughout the state, inform our research questions about the role of gardening in rural Alaska and the links between food cultivation practices and wild food traditions. In this study we find that home gardeners are essential pillars of food sovereignty and security in their communities, providing both gardened foods and high volumes and more diversity of wild foods. Gardening households increase the diversity of shared food resources in the community and serve as sinks of gardening knowledge and supplies for other community members. Traditional food practices and ethics are interwoven into gardening and have become part of annual food rounds and celebrations. Locally, cultivated foods are often described as a complement to age-old foodways that draw on histories and values connected to Indigenous agriculture and horticulture in the United States and Canada. Policies, practices, and programming of food and nutrition security and food sovereignty must consider the holistic food system and strategies that communities desire and invest in. 

Declining wild food use has been reported around the world for decades, with important implications for nutrition and well-being. Commonly listed threats include land-use change and overharvesting. Climate change acts to compound these. Herein, we examine the importance of wild foods around the world and the impact of climate change on wild food species. We highlight large variations between regions, both in terms of climate impacts on wild foods and their importance. The emerging evidence suggests that, in addition to the Arctic, arid regions (such as the Sahel region of West Africa) and mountain regions (such as the Himalayas) may be particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change on wild foods. We conclude with a reflection on the role of wild foods in climate change adaptation strategies and the ways that climate change adaptation strategies could threaten or enhance availability and accessibility to wild foods.