Follow the Ferments

Fermented foods/drinks are one of many traditional food preservation practices known to ameliorate flavor and nutritional value extend shelf life. They also an essential element in creating a regenerative system, that seeks create conditions enhance already existing systems rather than just sustaining them. However, gastronomic, traditional, heritage foods such as noncommercial fermented products not eligible be sold at local or global markets considered hazardous unfitting safety standards. Subsequently, these often produced homes, cottage industry farmers markets. In the United States, made by marginal communities, Latin, Middle Easterners, Southeast Asians, Indigenous communities. These carry meanings value, identity, sacredness have created trans-local ecosystem. This paper explores how Arizona, with its large growing population governs modes production. Using ethnographic multisite methodology “follow thing,” authors follow two foods—gundruk, yoghurt/soft cheese—observing they produced, consumed, valorized Arizona. We explore production unravels microbiopolitical entanglements, described through personal narratives contextualized within history larger regulatory structure. Like fermentation itself, reveal we should welcome unseen actors for more diverse inclusive governance atmosphere while redefining what place-based system look like.