Enduring Seeds

Enduring Seeds PDF Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
As biological diversity continues to shrink at an alarming rate, the loss of plant species poses a threat seemingly less visible than the loss of animals but in many ways more critical. In this book, one of America's leading ethnobotanists warns about our loss of natural vegetation and plant diversity while providing insights into traditional Native agricultural practices in the Americas. Gary Paul Nabhan here reveals the rich diversity of plants found in tropical forests and their contribution to modern crops, then tells how this diversity is being lost to agriculture and lumbering. He then relates "local parables" of Native American agriculture—from wild rice in the Great Lakes region to wild gourds in Florida—that convey the urgency of this situation and demonstrate the need for saving the seeds of endangered plants. Nabhan stresses the need for maintaining a wide gene pool, not only for the survival of these species but also for the preservation of genetic strains that can help scientists breed more resilient varieties of other plants. Enduring Seeds is a book that no one concerned with our environment can afford to ignore. It clearly shows us that, as agribusiness increasingly limits the food on our table, a richer harvest can be had by preserving ancient ways. This edition features a new foreword by Miguel Altieri, one of today's leading spokesmen for sustainable agriculture and the preservation of indigenous farming methods.

Enduring Seeds

Enduring Seeds PDF Author: Gary Paul Nabhan
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 9780816522590
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
As biological diversity continues to shrink at an alarming rate, the loss of plant species poses a threat seemingly less visible than the loss of animals but in many ways more critical. In this book, one of America's leading ethnobotanists warns about our loss of natural vegetation and plant diversity while providing insights into traditional Native agricultural practices in the Americas. Gary Paul Nabhan here reveals the rich diversity of plants found in tropical forests and their contribution to modern crops, then tells how this diversity is being lost to agriculture and lumbering. He then relates "local parables" of Native American agriculture—from wild rice in the Great Lakes region to wild gourds in Florida—that convey the urgency of this situation and demonstrate the need for saving the seeds of endangered plants. Nabhan stresses the need for maintaining a wide gene pool, not only for the survival of these species but also for the preservation of genetic strains that can help scientists breed more resilient varieties of other plants. Enduring Seeds is a book that no one concerned with our environment can afford to ignore. It clearly shows us that, as agribusiness increasingly limits the food on our table, a richer harvest can be had by preserving ancient ways. This edition features a new foreword by Miguel Altieri, one of today's leading spokesmen for sustainable agriculture and the preservation of indigenous farming methods.

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden

Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden PDF Author: Gilbert L. Wilson
Publisher: Minnesota Historical Society Press
ISBN: 0873516605
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
This that I now tell is as I saw my mothers do, or did myself, when I was young. My mothers were industrious women, and our family had always good crops; and I will tell now how the women of my father's family cared for their fields, as I saw them, and helped them. --Buffalo Bird Woman

Agricultural Policy of the United States

Agricultural Policy of the United States PDF Author: Stephanie A. Mercier
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030364526
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 439

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Book Description
This book serves as a foundational reference of U.S. land settlement and early agricultural policy, a comprehensive journey through the evolution of 20th century agricultural policy, and a detailed guide to the key agricultural policy issues of the early 21st century. This book integrates the legal, economic and political concepts and ideas that guided U.S. agricultural policy from colonial settlement to the 21st century, and it applies those concepts to the policy issues agriculture will face over the next generation. The book is organized into three sections. Section one introduces the main themes of the book, explores the pre-Columbian period and early European settlement, and traces the first 150 years of U.S. agricultural policy starting with the post revolution period and ending with the “golden age” of agriculture in the early 20th century. Section two outlines that grand bargain of the 1930s that initiated the modern era of government intervention into agricultural markets and traces this policy evolution to the early days of the 21st century. The third section provides an in-depth examination of six policy issues that dominate current policy discussions and will impact policy decisions for the next generation: trade, environment/conservation, commodity checkoff programs, crop insurance, biofuels, and domestic nutrition programs.

Agriculture of the American Indian

Agriculture of the American Indian PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 68

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Book Description


Eating the Landscape

Eating the Landscape PDF Author: Enrique Salm—n
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
ISBN: 0816530114
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Examines historical and cultural knowledge of traditional Indigenous foodways that are rooted in an understanding of environmental stewardship.

Native American Gardening

Native American Gardening PDF Author: Michael J. Caduto
Publisher: Fulcrum Publishing
ISBN: 9781555911485
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 180

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Book Description
Using tribal tales from across the country as inspiration, the authors provide practical information about seed preservation, planting and maintaining the garden, reaping and cooking the harvest.

Feeding Cahokia

Feeding Cahokia PDF Author: Gayle J. Fritz
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 0817320059
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Society for Economic Botany's Mary W. Klinger Book Award An authoritative and thoroughly accessible overview of farming and food practices at Cahokia Agriculture is rightly emphasized as the center of the economy in most studies of Cahokian society, but the focus is often predominantly on corn. This farming economy is typically framed in terms of ruling elites living in mound centers who demanded tribute and a mass surplus to be hoarded or distributed as they saw fit. Farmers are cast as commoners who grew enough surplus corn to provide for the elites. Feeding Cahokia: Early Agriculture in the North American Heartland presents evidence to demonstrate that the emphasis on corn has created a distorted picture of Cahokia’s agricultural practices. Farming at Cahokia was biologically diverse and, as such, less prone to risk than was maize-dominated agriculture. Gayle J. Fritz shows that the division between the so-called elites and commoners simplifies and misrepresents the statuses of farmers—a workforce consisting of adult women and their daughters who belonged to kin groups crosscutting all levels of the Cahokian social order. Many farmers had considerable influence and decision-making authority, and they were valued for their economic contributions, their skills, and their expertise in all matters relating to soils and crops. Fritz examines the possible roles played by farmers in the processes of producing and preparing food and in maintaining cosmological balance. This highly accessible narrative by an internationally known paleoethnobotanist highlights the biologically diverse agricultural system by focusing on plants, such as erect knotweed, chenopod, and maygrass, which were domesticated in the midcontinent and grown by generations of farmers before Cahokia Mounds grew to be the largest Native American population center north of Mexico. Fritz also looks at traditional farming systems to apply strategies that would be helpful to modern agriculture, including reviving wild and weedy descendants of these lost crops for redomestication. With a wealth of detail on specific sites, traditional foods, artifacts such as famous figurines, and color photos of significant plants, Feeding Cahokia will satisfy both scholars and interested readers.

Founding Gardeners

Founding Gardeners PDF Author: Andrea Wulf
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307390683
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
A groundbreaking look at the Founding Fathers and their obsession with gardening, agriculture, and botany by the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. • “Illuminating and engrossing.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.

American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century

American Agriculture in the Twentieth Century PDF Author: Bruce L. Gardner
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674037496
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 416

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Book Description
"Gardner documents both the economic difficulties that have confronted farmers and the technological and economic transformations that have lifted them from relative poverty to economic parity with the nonfarm population. He provides a detailed analysis of the causes behind these trends, with emphasis on the role of government action"--Jacket

Every Farm a Factory

Every Farm a Factory PDF Author: Deborah Kay Fitzgerald
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300133413
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
During the early part of the 20th century farming in America was transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial activity. This book explores the modernization of the 1920s, which saw farmers adopt not just new technology, but also the financial cultural & ideological apparatus of industrialism.