Long before tortilla soup and pecan pralines, San Antonio's tables were overflowing with corn, beans, squash, pecans, and wild game. On June 5, farmers, chefs, educators, and youth leaders will gather to argue that heritage foods are not just history but a blueprint for feeding the city’s future.

The third San Antonio Food Systems Summit runs 8:30 am-2:30 pm on June 5, at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, 555 Funston Place. The free, public event includes a presentation on local heritage foods, a panel of food system advocates, interactive sessions, garden tours, and live culinary demonstrations.

The event is a partnership among three San Antonio city departments and offices and several local nonprofits. Organizers plan to release a public report highlighting the resilience and sustainability of the local food system.

One of the summit's most concrete examples of heritage food at work is a drought-tolerant wheat that had fallen out of large-scale production. Researchers identified the crop, and San Antonio farmers and bakers are now investing in it and making products from it, says Colleen Swain, director of the San Antonio World Heritage Office.

"As our climate changes, we adapt. There may be some gems from our past, and maybe it's time to bring those back," Swain says.

The World Heritage Office is involved because it oversees the city's UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy designation, a distinction shared by only one other U.S. city, Tucson, Arizona, and nearly 60 cities abroad. Next year marks the 10th anniversary of San Antonio earning the title.

Swain says initiatives like the summit and the UNESCO designation underscore the deep history of how foods grown in the San Antonio area by Indigenous peoples became a foundation on which Spanish colonists, Mexicans, Germans, and other immigrants built a varied food system.

“Our culinary heritage showcases that confluence of not just peoples, but also where we're located, the importance of water in our geology and geography,” Swain says. “This is a celebration of our local culinary heritage and culture, but also how we sustain, share and blend it with new influences, and stay true to our roots, yet open to innovation.”

This year's keynote speaker is Gary Paul Nabhan, an agricultural ecologist, ethnobotanist, author, and Franciscan brother who is a pioneer of the local food and heirloom seed preservation movements.

The panel discussion will include Katie Erickson, program director at the San Antonio Botanical Garden, along with three San Antonio operations focused on sustainable farming: James Vives of Brushfire Farms, Amy Brown of Noonday Farms, and Mari Reb of Sana Roots. Noonday works to address local food insecurity, while Sana Roots links the growing and eating of local, healthy food to spirituality, holistic healing, and environmental stewardship.

The idea of old crops being a solution to new problems runs through the summit's programming. Organizers want to examine how heritage foods can anchor a food system serving a fast-growing population, one navigating climate stress, food deserts, and the threat of future water shortages.

According to Swain, public education is just as important as farming itself in strengthening a community's food system.

"There are plants that grow in your backyard that most people don't even know are edible, and there are ways you can prepare them," she says. "It's an important conversation to have, to learn about the past and how does that past play into our future?"

With the cost of water rights and water use climbing, Swain says conversations about urban farming and growing food locally have real urgency.

"There are ways that we can make healthy food more accessible to the community and be more respectful of our environment, because that's all part of that system," she says. "It's environmental. It's economic, it's social."