From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms

From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms PDF Author: Michael Classens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780774865487
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
Driving through the Holland Marsh one is struck immediately by the black richness of its soil. This is some of the most profitable farmland in Canada. But the small agricultural preserve just north of Toronto is a canary in a coal mine. From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms recounts the transformation, use, and protection of the Holland Marsh, exploring how human ideas about nature shape agriculture, while agriculture in turn shapes ideas about nature. Drawing on interviews, media accounts and archival data, Michael Classens concludes that celebrations of the Marsh as the quintessential example of peri-urban food sustainability and farmland protection have been too hasty. Instead, he demonstrates how capitalism and liberalism have fashioned, and ultimately imperilled, agriculture in the area. The social and ecological crises of our industrialized food system are becoming more acute, and questions about where our food comes from and under what conditions have never been more important. At the centre of these questions--and of any efforts to re-localize food systems--is the land. This fascinating case study reveals the contradictions and deficiencies of contemporary farmland preservation paradigms, highlighting the challenges of forging a more socially just and ecologically rational food system.

From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms

From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms PDF Author: Michael Classens
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780774865487
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book Here

Book Description
Driving through the Holland Marsh one is struck immediately by the black richness of its soil. This is some of the most profitable farmland in Canada. But the small agricultural preserve just north of Toronto is a canary in a coal mine. From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms recounts the transformation, use, and protection of the Holland Marsh, exploring how human ideas about nature shape agriculture, while agriculture in turn shapes ideas about nature. Drawing on interviews, media accounts and archival data, Michael Classens concludes that celebrations of the Marsh as the quintessential example of peri-urban food sustainability and farmland protection have been too hasty. Instead, he demonstrates how capitalism and liberalism have fashioned, and ultimately imperilled, agriculture in the area. The social and ecological crises of our industrialized food system are becoming more acute, and questions about where our food comes from and under what conditions have never been more important. At the centre of these questions--and of any efforts to re-localize food systems--is the land. This fascinating case study reveals the contradictions and deficiencies of contemporary farmland preservation paradigms, highlighting the challenges of forging a more socially just and ecologically rational food system.

From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms

From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms PDF Author: Michael Classens
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 9780774865463
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Driving through the Holland Marsh one is struck immediately by the black richness of its soil. Located just north of Toronto, this is some of the most profitable farmland in Canada. It is also a canary in a coal mine. From Dismal Swamp to Smiling Farms recounts the transformation, use, and protection of the Holland Marsh, demonstrating how liberal notions of progress and nature have shaped, and ultimately imperilled, this small agricultural preserve. This fascinating case study reveals the contradictions and deficiencies of contemporary farmland preservation paradigms, highlighting the challenges of forging a more socially just and ecologically rational food system.

Against the Tides

Against the Tides PDF Author: Ronald Rudin
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774866780
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
For four centuries, dykes held back the largest tides in the world, in the Bay of Fundy region of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. These dykes turned salt marsh into arable land and made farming possible, but by the 1940s they had fallen into disrepair. Against the Tides is the never-before-told story of the Maritime Marshland Rehabilitation Administration (MMRA), a federal agency created in 1948 to reshape the landscape. Although agency engineers often borrowed from long-standing dykeland practices, they were so convinced of their own expertise that they sometimes disregarded local conditions, marginalizing farmers in the process. The engineers’ hubris resulted in tidal dams that compromised some of the region’s rivers, leaving behind environmental damage. This book is a vivid, richly detailed account of a distinctive landscape and its occupants, revealing the push–pull of local and expert knowledge and the role of the state in the postwar era.

Creating a Modern Countryside

Creating a Modern Countryside PDF Author: James Murton
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774840714
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
In the early 1900s, British Columbia embarked on a brief but intense effort to manufacture a modern countryside. The government wished to reward Great War veterans with new lives: settlers would benefit from living in a rural community, considered a more healthy and moral alternative to urban life. But the fundamental reason for the land resettlement project was the rise of progressive or “new liberal” thinking, as reformers advocated an expanded role for the state in guaranteeing the prosperity and economic security of its citizens. James Murton examines how this process unfolded, and demonstrates how the human-environment relationship of the early twentieth century shaped the province as it is today.

Wet Prairie

Wet Prairie PDF Author: Shannon Stunden Bower
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 077485992X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
The Canadian prairies are often envisioned as dry, windswept fields; however, much of southern Manitoba is not arid plain but wet prairie, poorly drained land subject to frequent flooding. Shannon Stunden Bower brings to light the complexities of surface-water management in Manitoba, from early artificial drainage efforts to late-twentieth-century attempts at watershed management. She engages scholarship on the state, liberalism, and bioregionalism in order to probe the connections between human and environmental change in the wet prairie. This account of an overlooked aspect of the region’s environmental history reveals how the biophysical nature of southern Manitoba has been an important factor in the formation of Manitoba society and the provincial state.

Harper's New Monthly Magazine

Harper's New Monthly Magazine PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 1002

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Book Description


Harper's New Monthly Magazine

Harper's New Monthly Magazine PDF Author: Henry Mills Alden
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 980

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Book Description
Harper's informs a diverse body of readers of cultural, business, political, literary and scientific affairs.

Levelling the Lake

Levelling the Lake PDF Author: Jamie Benidickson
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774835516
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Stretching across Ontario, Manitoba, and Minnesota, the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake basin spans boundaries and jurisdictions. Levelling the Lake explores a century and a half of social, economic, and legal arrangements through which the resources and environment of the Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake watershed have been harnessed and harmed. Jamie Benidickson traces the environmental consequences of mining, forest industries, commercial fishing, hydro-electricity production, and recreation, as well as their often unanticipated impacts on local residents, including Indigenous communities, which encouraged new legal and institutional responses. Assessing the transition from primary resource extraction toward sustainable development at a watershed level, Levelling the Lake also shows how interjurisdictional and transboundary issues – many involving the Canada-US International Joint Commission – continue to play a significant role throughout the region.

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States

A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States PDF Author: Frederick Law Olmsted
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Enslaved persons
Languages : en
Pages : 756

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Book Description
Examines the economy and it's impact of slavery on the coast land slave states pre-Civil War.

Australia visited and revisited. A narrative of recent travels and old experiences in Victoria and New South Wales

Australia visited and revisited. A narrative of recent travels and old experiences in Victoria and New South Wales PDF Author: Samuel MOSSMAN (and BANISTER (Thomas))
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description