Author: Glenn Davis Stone
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 100060974X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 295
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Book Description
The Agricultural Dilemma questions everything we think we know about the current state of agriculture and how to, or perhaps more importantly how not to, feed a world with a growing population. This book is about the three fundamental forms of agriculture: Malthusian (expansion), industrialization (external-input-dependent), and intensification (labor-based). The best way to understand the three agricultures, and how we tend to get it wrong, is to consider what drives their growth. The book provides a thoughtful, critical analysis that upends entrenched misconceptions such as that we are running out of land for food production and that our only hope is the development of new agricultural technologies. The book contains engaging and enlightening vignettes and short histories, with case studies drawn from across the globe to bring to life this important debate and dilemma. The book concludes by arguing there is a viable alternative to industrial agriculture which will allow us to meet the world's needs and it ponders why such alternatives have been downplayed, obscured, or hidden from view. This important book is essential reading for all studying and researching food production and agriculture, and more broadly for all interested in ensuring we are able to feed our growing population.
Author: Angus Wright
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292712685
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 423
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Book Description
The Death of Ramón González has become a benchmark book since its publication in 1990. It has been taught in undergraduate and graduate courses in every social science discipline, sustainable and alternative agriculture, environmental studies, ecology, ethnic studies, public health, and Mexican, Latin American, and environmental history. The book has also been used at the University of California-Santa Cruz as a model of interdisciplinary work and at the University of Iowa as a model of fine journalism, and has inspired numerous other books, theses, films, and investigative journalism pieces. This revised edition of The Death of Ramón González updates the science and politics of pesticides and agricultural development. In a new afterword, Angus Wright reconsiders the book's central ideas within the context of globalization, trade liberalization, and NAFTA, showing that in many ways what he called "the modern agricultural dilemma" should now be thought of as a "twenty-first century dilemma" that involves far more than agriculture.
Author: Michael Pollan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143038583
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 481
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Book Description
"Outstanding . . . a wide-ranging invitation to think through the moral ramifications of our eating habits." —The New Yorker One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year and Winner of the James Beard Award Author of This is Your Mind on Plants, How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestseller In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.
Author: Pierre Desrochers
Publisher: Public Affairs
ISBN: 1586489402
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
Deconstructs the "eat local" ethos and argues that it distracts people from solving serious global food issues and explains how the elimination of agriculture subsidies and opening international trade offers a sustainable solution.
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Angus Lindsay Wright
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292715660
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 366
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Book Description
The Death of Ramon Gonzalez is a blockbuster. In a dramatic, readable story, Wright has provided a new way of looking at the tragic human and environmental consequences of chemical-dependent agriculture. His case study of the Mexican export vegetable industry and of migrant farmworkers shows how what we call 'agricultural development' is really a headlong rush toward ecological catastrophe. His synthesis of the thoughts and experiments of those working for alternatives makes a major new contribution. --Wes Jackson, The Land Institute [Wright's] concern is for the victimized men, women, and children in a beautiful land, living and working in a cloud of toxins of which they have no understanding. If this story has any lasting effect on Mexico's environmental policies, the death of Ramon Gonzalez may prove to have been weightier than the usual statistic. --Audubon . . . competitive in a class with Barry Commoner's The Closing Circle or Rachael Carson's Silent Spring in vividly drawing attention to the destructive, unsustainable logic behind much of modern agricultural practices, particularly in developing countries like Mexico. --Stephen P. Mumme, associate professor of political science, Colorado State University
Author: A. Whitney Sanford
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813134129
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290
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Book Description
The costs of industrial agriculture are astonishing in terms of damage to the environment, human health, animal suffering, and social equity, and the situation demands that we expand our ecological imagination to meet this crisis. In response to growing dissatisfaction with the existing food system, farmers and consumers are creating alternate models of production and consumption that are both sustainable and equitable. In Growing Stories from India: Religion and the Fate of Agriculture, author A. Whitney Sanford uses the story of the deity Balaram and the Yamuna River as a foundation for discussing the global food crisis and illustrating the Hindu origins of agrarian thought. By employing narrative as a means of assessing modern agriculture, Sanford encourages us to reconsider our relationship with the earth. Merely creating new stories is not enough -- she asserts that each story must lead to changed practices. Growing Stories from India demonstrates that conventional agribusiness is only one of many options and engages the work of modern agrarian luminaries to explore how alternative agricultural methods can be implemented.
Author: Paul Streeten
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1349189219
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 136
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Book Description
The starting point of Paul Streeten's book is the dilemma, faced by policy makers in many developing countries: should the price of food be high, in order to stimulate production, or low, in order to prevent poor food buyers from starving? The author goes on to discuss the role of prices in the light of these and other objectives. 'It is the work of one of our wisest scholars on what I consider to be the key policy issue for economic development in the 1980s...this provocative essay will be required reading for anyone working on agricultural price policy.' C.Peter Timmer 'It provides solid and practical guidance to scholars and decision-makers. It is lucid, balanced and, above all, useful.' Robert Klitgaard 'Paul Streeten is well known for his gift of explaining the pros and cons of difficult policy issues in a clear, simple and realistic way, appealing to policy-makers, students and the wider development community, as well as to academic colleagues. This gift is fully displayed in his new book, and readers are bound to emerge with a better awareness of the conflicts and policy reforms which are involved.' H.W.Singer
Author: Jonathan David Chambers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Author: Philip Garone
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520948491
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 443
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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive environmental history of California’s Great Central Valley, where extensive freshwater and tidal wetlands once provided critical habitat for tens of millions of migratory waterfowl. Weaving together ecology, grassroots politics, and public policy, Philip Garone tells how California’s wetlands were nearly obliterated by vast irrigation and reclamation projects, but have been brought back from the brink of total destruction by the organized efforts of duck hunters, whistle-blowing scientists, and a broad coalition of conservationists. Garone examines the many demands that have been made on the Valley’s natural resources, especially by large-scale agriculture, and traces the unforeseen ecological consequences of our unrestrained manipulation of nature. He also investigates changing public and scientific attitudes that are now ushering in an era of unprecedented protection for wildlife and wetlands in California and the nation.
