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At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.

Customer Reviews (5)

Wonderful
A deep and inviting look into why the American agriculture system looks the way it does. While much more prosaic in approach and not as revolutionary as the writings of Wendell Berry, by looking at the facts Conkin draws the same conclusions, problems, and solutions that we as Americans face in both our Agriculture and Culture.

Well organized and very interesting
I found this book to be a complete view of farming and offered information on the history of farming and the laws which affect it, as well as the current application of federal regulations. Highly recommended for anyone in agriculture or farming.

Critical of American agriculture?This is how we got here. . .
As Americans grow more concerned about where their food comes from, it is important to understand how our current agricultural system developed.Paul Conkin's "A Revolution Down on the Farm," a history of American agriculture since the Great Depression, provides an excellent account.

According to Conkin, new technologies allowed American agriculture to experience tremendous productivity increases after World War II.While population has grown since World War II, agricultural productivity has grown even more.The upshot of this is less hunger in the world; on the other hand, the supply of agricultural products usually far exceeds demand, as farmers (for some reason) are exceedingly bad at responding to price signals.

Conkin then explores policymakers' efforts to address this supply-demand imbalance and assure farmers a decent income.Remarkably, he provides a readily comprehensible account of America's various farm bills and the measures they have employed to reduce crop acreage and keep farm incomes up.Ultimately, however, technological advances outweighed the acreage reductions, pushing profit margins down and requiring many farmers to "get big" to stay in business.

Conkin's clear history is augmented by personal recollections of his childhood on a small farm in eastern Tennessee.He also provides his own assessment of American agriculture at the end of the book.While Conkin clearly admires the productivity of modern agriculture, he also laments its human and environmental effects.

"A Revolution Down on the Farm" is a compelling read; I highly recommend it.

Interesting
Very interesting to read how the farm and rural areas have changed throughout the years.

A comparison with today's financial crisis.
The book is clearly written.Readers should compare the crises in agriculture and the actions of government in the 1930's with today's financial crisis and especially how today's government is trying to deal with the financial crisis. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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This book examines the theology and ethics of land use, especially the practices of modern industrialized agriculture, in light of critical biblical exegesis. Nine interrelated essays explore the biblical writers' pervasive concern for the care of arable land against the background of the geography, social structures, and religious thought of ancient Israel. This approach consistently brings out neglected aspects of texts, both poetry and prose, that are central to Jewish and Christian traditions. Rather than seeking solutions from the past, Davis creates a conversation between ancient texts and contemporary agrarian writers; thus she provides a fresh perspective from which to view the destructive practices and assumptions that now dominate the global food economy. The biblical exegesis is wide-ranging and sophisticated; the language is literate and accessible to a broad audience. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Fascinating read
I'm not aware that this approach has been taken before--and it's so obvious and sensible. I also appreciate the frequent references to Wendell Berry who has so much of great iportance to say about caring for the land.

Ancient Roots and Modern Flowers
Ellen Davis has done with scripture what Barbara Kingsolver and Michael Pollan have done with our current food supply-- she has exposed the ancient roots that support small farms and intimacy with the land as the most secure foundation for a stable society and sustainable earth.
The book, though somewhat technical in its Biblical scholarship, is interspersed with excerpts from modern writers and researchers (primarily Wendell Berry) in ways that illustrate the rich Biblical work, making it accessible for most any reader with a good foundation in Bible study. It would be excellent as a group study, and could be paired with one of the writers above or other currentbooks on the subjects of food security and land use ethics.
Anyone who values religious roots and/or spiritual wisdom related to the use and care of the earth, and the role of the human species in it, will find rich ground to plow here. Davis shows not only that the Bible has a concern for the earth and the well-being of its creatures, but that this concern is central to the Israelites. She even finds this at the heart of the holiness codes in Deuteronomy, which readers often skip over to avoid boredom.
In short, "Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture" makes it clear that the Bible's most ancient wisdom, in terms of food production and land use, was local, sustainable, and organic when local, sustainable, and organic wasn't cool! ... Read more

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Maynard Murray was a medical doctor who researched the crucial importance of minerals - especially trace elements - to plants and animals. Beginning in 1938 and continuing through the 1950s, Dr. Murray used sea solids - mineral salts remaining after water is evaporated from ocean water - as fertilizer on a variety of vegetables, fruits and grains. His extensive experiments demonstrated repeatedly and conclusively that plants fertilized with sea solids and animals fed sea-solid-fertilized feeds grow stronger and more resistant to disease.

Sea Energy Agriculture recounts Murray's experiments and presents his astounding conclusions. The work of this eco-pioneer was largely ignored during his lifetime, and his book became a lost classic - out-of-print for more than 25 years. Now this rare volume is once again available, with a new foreward and afterword by the founder of Acres U.S.A., Charles Walters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Keys to a hidden treasure
This book should be in the library of every farmer that desires to produce healthy, nutritious crops and livestock.

Sea Energy Agriculture (Paperback) by Maynard Murray
This is some thing which never came to my mind because I thought it was impossible.

After reading the book I realised the value of Sea water and Sea solids. I tried it on my house plants first. I saw unbelievable results. Many farmers can save billions of dollars if they try this. I guarantee it.

EVERYONE should read this book!
The information in this book will save you & your family's lives. Grow your own produce without poisons and with all the nutrients the human body needs to be healthy and stay out of the doctor's office for good. I'm serious, take your life back from commercial GMO's and depleted nutrition. Go to [...] and get started, we did!!

Best book ever! Eat vegan living foods!
This book will open your mind to a new level of thinking. A must for anybody who eats food. Pick up a copy for all the farmers in your area! ... Read more

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While the American agricultural and food systems follow a decades-old path of industrialization and globalization, a counter trend has appeared toward localizing some agricultural and food production. Thomas A. Lyson, a scholar-practitioner in the field of community-based food systems, calls this rebirth of locally based agriculture and food production civic agriculture because these activities are tightly linked to a community's social and economic development. Civic agriculture embraces innovative ways to produce, process, and distribute food, and it represents a sustainable alternative to the socially, economically, and environmentally destructive practices associated with conventional large-scale agriculture. Farmers' markets, community gardens, and community-supported agriculture are all forms of civic agriculture.

Lyson describes how, in the course of a hundred years, a small-scale, diversified system of farming became an industrialized system of production and also how this industrialized system has gone global. He argues that farming in the United States was modernized by employing the same techniques and strategies that transformed the manufacturing sector from a system of craft production to one of mass production. Viewing agriculture as just another industrial sector led to transformations in both the production and the processing of food. As small farmers and food processors were forced to expand, merge with larger operations, or go out of business, they became increasingly disconnected from the surrounding communities. Lyson enumerates the shortcomings of the current agriculture and food systems as they relate to social, economic, and environmental sustainability. He then introduces the concept of community problem solving and offers empirical evidence and concrete examples to show that a re-localization of the food production system is underway. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Important and too often ignored
The issues that are addressed by Thomas Lyson in this small volume are important and becoming more so. He describes in adequate detail the progression from subsistance farming of our great grand parents to the industrial farms of today. He goes on to discuss how feeding and clothing the world's growing population in that manner is becoming more and more problematic and shows how the development of community based agriculture provides a path out of that morass.

One need not be an agronomist or agricultural economist to appreciate Professor Lyson's statement of the problem and its possible solution. In fact, the non-technical reader could well perceive this book as a good starting point for participation in this most important discussion. ... Read more

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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects: Canning and preserving ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Public land for public produce
Public Produce: The New Urban Agriculture may be ahead of its time.It poses an interesting question to city and town planners - and we, the residents: should local food production rank right up there with planning for local housing, roads and education?

Darrin Nordahl who has taught at the University of California Extension in Berkeley and now works for the Community and Economic Development Department in Davenport, Iowa, considers municipally sponsored agricultural projects a natural extension of the "post organic/buy local" movement. He presents some stunning projects to prove his point. Local governments can become a change agent in the area of local food production.

Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, who reasons that "importing some food is different from importing most of it," houses a 200,000-member apiary on the green roof of City Hall.Sale of its honey supports local cultural events.Kaiser Permanente, the largest health organization in the country, opens Farmers Markets in thirty of its facilities from Georgia to Hawaii.The first, in Oakland, California, was started because a Kaiser doctor is convinced that "nothing is more important to people's health that what they eat everyday."

In Detroit, Michigan, 30 percent of the city's land is vacant.Community groups have converted these underused locations into local opportunities to produce food. Detroit's urban farming recently sparked stories in the New York Times.Seattle adopted a city-wide goal: create a dedicated garden site for each 2,500 households.Providence, Rhode Island intends to double the amount of food grown in and around the city in the next ten years. Des Moines, Iowa, has already moved beyond public food gardens to establish public orchards, grape arbors and a nuttery.

The author argues that "the sheer abundance of land within public control necessitates a hard look at how it can best serve the needs of the shareholders" and points to an "increasing number of public officials across the country who believe growing food is not only an acceptable land use, but necessary for the health and well-being of the community.

The future will hopefully be, as Nordahl suggests, a time when growing food constitutes "the highest and best use for land."The publication of this book certainly forwards that view of the future.
... Read more

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Forty years after French protestors took to the streets with the rallying cry Sous les pavs, la plage! (Beneath the pavement, the beach!), a new form of radical expression took shape at MoMA's P.S.1 courtyard in Queens, New York. Above the Pavement--the Farm! reveals the groundbreaking efforts of architecture firm WORKac and their team of more than 150 collaborators--farmers, politicians, horticulturists, technicians, soil scientists, engineers, architecture students, and artists--to create a working urban farm, hoisted 30 feet high, using industrial cardboard tubes filled with more than 50 varieties of locally grown fruits and vegetables. Called Public Farm 1 (P.F.1), this new breed of sustainable infrastructure, capable of generating its own power, recycling rainwater, cultivating crops, and encouraging leisure, demonstrated that even the most impossibly utopian visions of green city living are within our reach.

Above the Pavement--the Farm! presents a delectable range of ideas and issues situated at the intersection of architecture, urbanism, and food. Featuring a lively mlange of voices depicting the making of P.F.1--with contributions by artist and agricultural activist Fritz Haeg, architectural historian Meredith TenHoor, architect Winy Maas, and head chef Michael Anthony of New York City's Gramercy Tavern--this book introduces a new era of ecological thinking and urban sustenance.

Amale Andraos and Dan Wood are the founders of New York City-based WORK Architecture Company.  ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Establishes that the current factory farm,petroleum based agricultural system is not sustainable
Ikerd has done an excellent job of demonstrating that the current factory farm approach to farming is simply not economically sustainable or environmentally sound in the long run.It has TWO Achilles heels .The first is that it relies completely on petroleum based chemicals,fertilizers,pesticides,fungicides,and herbicides that, cumulatively, are contributing to significant soil erosion and top soil loss in order to produce and harvest various grain crops throughout the world.Increases in the price of a barrel of oil automatically translates into higher and higher food prices inall countries.Third world countries are especially impacted negatively .The second involves the factory farm extension to meat production.This approach requires the use of massive amounts of antibiotics to deal with/prevent the periodic outbreaks of contagious diseases that can spread through animal populations' crammed together like sardines in a can.These antibiotics also make the animals fatter,thus generating a higher profit per animal sold.Unfortunately,the social costs of such animal factory farms are passed down to the consumer.The consumerdevelops a resistance to the antibiotics contained in the meat products as he consumes more amd more meat over time.More and more germs are developing such resistance to a wide range of antibiotics. The doctors of sick patients discover all too often that the antibiotics do not work . ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

Visions of how others made it with small organic farms.
This book tells the stories of ten small organic farms.Great books on how to grow veggies abound.But it's rare to hear how folks made their farms pay.We have been setting up a small organic farm for a year and find it ... humbling.But this book encourages me to keep at it.

I started with the chapter on Animal Farm because I know Gita, the founder.She sells at the Farmer's market with us.She knew next to nothing about gardening when she first planted at Animal Farm.More zucchini than the family could eat.Gita sold some to an elegant Houston restaurant.That chef became her best customer, asked her to grow this and that, and the farming grew.Now she has eight acres under cultivation and employs four people.

When Houston's first farmer's market started up in 2003, she sold there also.I laughed when the book said she doesn't enjoy selling.I still feel shy and tense at the market.

I studied the photo of Gita's hoop house (greenhouse). She has five of them adding up to 9000 square feet.Gita hopes to install a root cellar.I need something to store produce waiting for market.Would a root celler be more energy efficient and cheaper to than a walk-in cooler?

Home Sweet Farm started up fast.Within two years, they were supplying eighty five families through their CSA.Every week, Home Sweet Farm drops off their customers' food at various locations in the city.Why was it so quick for them while it has been harder for me? They had more experience to start with.

This book will help.

Love hearing about family farms
As a fan of Michael Pollan and Joel Salatin, I enjoy reading about those small farms that produce truly nutritious food.This book tells the stories of modern day family farmers in Texas and the issues they have to face.

Growing Good Things To Eat in Texas
I loved it! It was the culmination of my interest for the past nine years in organic and sustainable agriculture. What I love is, people like this who care about the food I eat. At least 3 of the bios have a direct connection to my food purchases. I envy their life style and appreciate their hard work ethics. Her style was very precise and informative as well as entertaining to me. ... Read more

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PLEASE PROVIDE COURSE INFORMATIONThis book develops and applies concepts, analytical methods, and descriptive information about agricultural finance. It focuses on planning, analyzing, and controlling business performance in agriculture and related financial markets. This edition includes new chapters on the management environment for financial institutions, financial intermediaries in agriculture, and legal aspects of finance. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Financial Management in Agriculture (6th Edition)
This a comprehensive rewiev financial Management of a farm. ... Read more

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Anyone who travels California's byways sees the many faces of agriculture. A huge entwined business, farming and ranching are the state's dominant land use. Yet few Californians understand what animals and crops are raised or how agriculture reflects our relationship with nature. This fascinating and gorgeously illustrated field guide gathers essential information about agriculture and its environmental context, and answers the perennial question posed by California travelers: "What is that, and why is it growing here?" Paul F. Starrs's lively text explores the full range of the state's agriculture, deftly balancing agribusiness triumphalism with the pride of boutique producers, sketching meanwhile the darker shadows that can envelop California farming. Documented with diverse maps and Peter Goin's insightful photographs, A Field Guide to California Agriculture captures the industry's energy and ingenuity and its wildly diverse iconography, from the mysteries of forbidden crops (like marijuana) to the majesties of scale in food production. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A marriage of brains and beauty that cannot be missed.
It should be noted that I am not necessarily a marriage advocate, but in the case of academic writing I have found that the ability to inculcate said texts with a pleasing aesthetic and inspiring rhetoric seems a lost art, somewhat akin to the romantic and private notion of the marriages of yore. Overwhelmed these days with quickie marriages (and divorces and remarriages) we have lost the sense of a purposeful and intentional union of the best that two (or more, I lay no moral boundaries) parties have to offer, most obviously in the area of the academic press. And so, thank goodness for academics like Paul Starr and Peter Goin who are able to produce a perfect combination of the quantitative and the qualitative in a field guide that will satisfy the most technical of the nature lovers to the most romantic.

The Field Guide to California Agriculture serves the purpose of its title in more ways than I can (or need to) enumerate here, especially as I am not in the general category of 'field guide' aficionados. However, I am a geographer and as such I am innately interested in (possibly more accurately described as fascinated by) the relationship between our landscapes and their inhabitants. This text, through elegant - and even cheeky suggestiveness on occasion - is uniquely informative about the nature of California's agricultural tradition(s) and the state of the State, as it were. As a native (and likely overly proud) Californian, the Guide's historical overview is fascinating, if you can get past the color coded index of which even Edward Tufte might feel pangs of envy. The dynamic nature of California's agricultural legacy and the contemporary issues surrounding the industry in both macro- and micro- terms are presented through brilliant writing and complemented by Peter Goin's stunning photography. And let me not neglect to mention the maps - oh cartography, you make me weak in the knees... The maps in the Guide offer myriad ways to contextualize and apply the information within as well as allow for the curious among us to plan any number of road trips to appreciate the diversity that these authors have managed to bring to life in beautiful form.

As an encyclopedic reference, the book is comprehensive and user-friendly. For anyone who eats, cooks, appreciates or even considers the beauty of food, this book will sate even the most ravenous appetite. I have found myself looking through this book again and again as I sit surrounded by the (beautiful) urban milieu of San Francisco, reminding me of the inherently interconnected nature of the land we occupy and the shape of things to come for us as human consumers, protectors and observers of this amazing geographical space that is California.

Geographical Masterpiece
In their Field Guide to California Agriculture, geographer Paul F. Starrs and photographer Peter Goin have devised a new genre of writing. The book's title hardly does it justice, as the "field guide" that it encompasses is embedded in a comprehensive, erudite, and eloquent disquisition on the history, economics, sociology and - above all - geography of agricultural production in what is arguably the world's top farming location. It is, in a word, a masterpiece - one that should appeal equally to a broad public audience and to academic experts. The authors have an uncanny ability to hone in on topics of interest and significance, conveying their importance with precision and wit. Their book is both immensely informative and unfailingly entertaining.

Thanks in good part to the University of California Press, field guides have been evolving in recent years. Starrs and Goin, however, have taken the genre to a new completely new level, in both a scholarly and literary sense. To be sure, the book fulfills all of the necessary functions of the traditional field guide, aiding readers in crop and animal identification. Distinguishing features are listed for each entry, and an eight-page "agricultural product identification" guide provides a useful overview. If one is wondering, for example, whether an orchard contains walnut trees, guidelines are provided. As the walnut entry on page 216 puts it: "The utterly distinctive graft line where the English walnut slip was grafted onto a native black walnut rootstock ... shows 6 to 24 inches above the ground: an instantaneous sign that this is a walnut..." But as is typical for the book, the key to walnut identification does not conclude so prosaically. Instead, the paragraph ends with an evocative tag: "The cicatrice is signature." One does not generally turn to field guides for stylistic grace, but Starrs' writing is at once eloquent and playful. One gets the impression that he had a great deal of fun writing the book, and his enthusiasm can be infectious.

The Field Guide to California Agriculture covers a staggering array of crops and livestock, from bok choi to oysters to cannabis. Each entry covers economic significance, spatial distribution, historical background, and issues of labor demand and farm management. The photos are plentiful and the maps are sharp. California's share of the national harvest is duly noted for each entry, as is the market value. Obtaining the relevant numbers required considerable sleuthing for some crops. The marijuana entry is one of the most detailed in the book, as befits a crop that may well be worth more than all other California agricultural products combined. It is to Starrs and Goin's credit that they tackle the issue head-on, writing about it with knowledge and verve.

The Field Guide to California Agriculture is divided into four main sections. The largest is an encyclopedia of crops and livestock, forming the field guide proper. The volume begins with a 70-page historical overview, and concludes with a similarly comprehensive essay on agricultural regions. These book-ends could together form a book on their own. The second section is a luscious photographical gallery aptly titled, "The Paradox and Poetics of Agriculture." With enlargements and additions, it too could stand alone. Packaged together with the individual crop entries, they add up to a tour de force. ... Read more

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Biodynamics is an internationally recognized approach to organic agriculture in which the farmer or gardener respects and works with the spiritual dimension of the earth's environment. In a world where conventional agricultural methods threaten the environment, biodynamic farms and gardens are designed to have a sound ecological balance. This concise and fully illustrated book presents evidence that biodynamic crops put down deeper roots, show strong resistance to disease and have better keeping qualities than conventionally produced crops. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Biodynamic agriculture - a beginners guide
This book provides a very brief introduction to the world of biodynamic agriculture. It is a very brief overview and should be regarded more as a pamphlet rather than a book. For someone who knows nothing about biodynamic agriculture it is a good starting point. Unfortunately it does not go further than mentioning the basic concepts so if you are looking for more detail on where the concepts came from or how to practically apply them then this is not your book. This book is a good starting point as the reference and further reading lists are useful. This book is probably most useful for providing the content for a high school or under graduate lecture module on BD agriculture.

Steiner is a Genius!
This book is a must. Not only for the man on the land but for home gardeners as well. If we take time to observe our surroundings on a seasonal basis and to dispense with the overuse of chemicals which only benefit their manufacturers, the health of our soil as well as our own will blossom. ... Read more

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In Origins of Agriculture in Western Central Asia, archaeologist David R. Harris addresses questions of when, how, and why agriculture and settled village life began east of the Caspian Sea. The book describes and assesses evidence from archaeological investigations in Turkmenistan and adjacent parts of Iran, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan in relation to present and past environmental conditions and genetic and archaeological data on the ancestry of the crops and domestic animals of the Neolithic period. It includes accounts of previous research on the prehistoric archaeology of the region and reports the results of a recent environmental-archaeological project undertaken by British, Russian, and Turkmen archaeologists in Turkmenistan, principally at the early Neolithic site of Jeitun (Djeitun) on the southern edge of the Karakum desert.

This project has demonstrated unequivocally that agropastoralists who cultivated barley and wheat, raised goats and sheep, hunted wild animals, made stone tools and pottery, and lived in small mudbrick settlements were present in southern Turkmenistan by 7,000 years ago (c. 6,000 BCE calibrated), where they came into contact with hunter-gatherers of the "Keltiminar Culture." It is possible that barley and goats were domesticated locally, but the available archaeological and genetic evidence leads to the conclusion that all or most of the elements of the Neolithic "Jeitun Culture" spread to the region from farther west by a process of demic or cultural diffusion that broadly parallels the spread of Neolithic agropastoralism from southwest Asia into Europe.

By synthesizing for the first time what is currently known about the origins of agriculture in a large part of Central Asia, between the more fully investigated regions of southwest Asia and China, this book makes a unique contribution to the worldwide literature on transitions from hunting and gathering to agriculture.

Customer Reviews (5)

a visionary book
This is an amazing book!Published in 1950, it is the second, enlarged edition of a book originally written in, I think, 1939.It reflects a lifetime of research around the world and personal trials on the author's farm in Virginia on the uses of tree crops for animal and human food.It anticipates the permaculture literature in advocating a "two-storey" agriculture, with tree crops (primarily nuts) as the primary source of animal fodder on sloping and hilly land.It documents the incredible productivity of tree crops and their traditional uses as fodder for pigs, goats, cattle, and poultry.I was particularly struck by the evidence from southern Europe, where extensive chestnut forests produce(d) some of the finest pork in the region.But there is evidence from around the globe, attesting to not only the uses of tree crops but their potential for breeding to build on that potential.

Following up on Smith's advice, I went to my local garden shop recently to inquire about honey locusts.Oh yes, I was told, we sold quite a few to the city as shade trees.No, no, I said, I want a messy variety, one that drops bushels of pods.She looked it up.Apparently the breeders have indeed been at work since Smith wrote -- eliminating the seeds from a tree that could provide nutritious feed to replace the corn and soy beans whose production has been ravishing the planet for decades!The book should be in every permaculturalist's library but in every rural public library, as well, and regularly taught in our terrible agricultural colleges.

A solution for the future
A wonderful book. Required reading for those interested in the future of farming and food-systems. A great deal of our food comes from trees, which do not need to be replanted constantly, so soil and ecosystem destruction from plowing is greatly reduced. Very close to the ideas of Bill Mollison's permaculture. You can do this right in our own backyard garden.

Dilligent but Grand
Tree Crops is a real gem of a book for anyone interested in sustainable agriculture.In 1953, J. Russell Smith proposed shifting to an no-till agriculture based on trees as a way to avoid soil erosion, nutrient depletion, and weeds.His proposal is well thought out, researched, and presented.A delightful set of small black and white photographs illustrates applications of his idea.One shows pigs collecting the mulberries from the grassy field of a mulberry grove...other pictures illustrate carob and persimmons cultivation.J. Russell Smith taught economic geography at Columbia University, but he was interested in concrete details. The writing style is calm and diligent, but the proposal is a grand one, is it not?

A Visionary; A Vision and a Timeless Prescription
J. Russel Smith's book changed my life.It set me on a course to become an authority on solving world hunger on a local level and I have traveled to the third world with Smith's advice clearly in mind.This is not an easy read, and the photographs are black and white, not very clear and dated.But.This man writes in the 1950's (this is a reprint) that we need to stop the destruction of the rain forests of the world (! - now THAT was thinking ahead!).Agricultural planners in all countries need to give this book a look:Smith is right on and shows a way in the darkness towards universal food without shortages.This book should be on the shelf of any serious world agriculturalist and anyone who deems that world hunger can be overcome.

Tree crops offer potential solutions for a sustainable ag.
I don't have too much to say about Tree Crops---A Permanent Agriculture wrote by J. Russell Smith and the introduction by Wendell Berry.Its is a summary of tree choices for US lands and there potential roles as a foodsource for humans and livestock.I was most intriuged by the informationon utilizing mulberry trees as an early season feed supply for pigs andchickens.I would recommend the book for any sustainable ag fans who arevery willing to think outside the box. ... Read more

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Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land.From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted.

Mazoyer and Roudart's A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit.

During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then.Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable.Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.

Customer Reviews (2)

Systematic Review of Agricultural Systems
I must say in brief that I disagree with the comment that denigrates the book because it does not cover the history of world agriculture in a complete matter.Though I am only a student of the subject, I would say this book is a systematic overview of the development of agriculture.To quote from the book (p. 21) "...one is not able to analyze a given agricultural system, formulate a diagnostic, and propose projects and policies of development without being grounded in a systematic knowledge of the organization, functioning, and dynamics of different sorts of agricultural systems.
This book attempts to build this type of knowledge, under the synthesized form of a theory of historical transformations and geographical differentiations of agrarian systems. ..."

The book covers agriculture as agricultural systems and not necessarily as specific manifestations.The chapters are roughly (and not completely) described as follows (p. 25):the second chapter recounts the origins of agriculture in the Neolithic epoch , third systems of slash and burn, fourth hydraulic agrarian systems in arid regions, fifth Inca (terraced) agrarian system, sixth animal drawn systems based on the ard, fallowing & accompanying animal herding in temperate regions of Europe, seventh animal drawn cultivation based on plow, fallowing, and accompanying animal herding in the cold temperate regions, eighth animal drawn cultivation using plow and without fallowing, ninth mechanization of animal traction and transport and ten being the motorized, mechanized specialized systems using mineral fertilizers.
Not being an expert in the subject, there may be other systems of agriculture not included that I don't know about.But it is a well-written book and is systematic.If one likes that approach, it is well worth to at least look it through if you can get access to it.

Also of note, there is a recommendation on the back of the book by Samir Amin, and, if you are appreciative of Amin's writings, then I think that you would like this book.

misleading title
This book is not a history of "world" agriculture.It is rather an idiosyncratic history of agriculture in Western Europe, with a few peripheral discussions of some odd non-European topics.

It has a chapter on Inca agriculture and political structure, but extremely minimal discussion of any other precolumbian American systems (Aztecs, North American, etc.)It has a chapter on Egypt - which strictly speaking in antiquity is part of the West - but this chapter goes all the way up to the late 20th century!Yet he does not have any discussion of the Arab agricultural revolution, which has been well documented by American and other scholars.

Most problematic is that the book does not have any significant discussion of the history of the main agrarian societies in world history -- China and India.China at least needed a chapter, all it gets is a few passages or mentions, and India even less.

In general, the few sources he cites are almost all French.While there are certainly good scholars in France, this author's source base is clearly too narrow to allow him to be aware of recent developments in scholarship outside his own country and language and the new directions and priorities in research.

The way the book was written is also problematic.The author issues judgments about particular periods as though his evaluations of them are final and obvious, when in fact scholarly views about the conditions and social relations he describes are by no means definite and remain matters of dispute.In such a large book he should have been able to find some space to acknowledge uncertainties and alternative viewpoints.

The book is long and does have some valuable information on many points.But it is definitely not the book that its title claims it to be. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
In this provocative, wide-ranging book, Richard Manning offers a dramatically revisionist view of recent human evolution, beginning with the vast increase in brain size that set us apart from our primate relatives and brought an accompanying increase in our need for nourishment. For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years.

The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (20)

A polemic against agriculture
This book consists of two halves: a history of the world and a political polemic. For almost all of our existence as a species, humans have been hunters, fishers and gatherers. People have been eating parts of hundreds of plant species; if some were deficient in some nutrients, others compensated for this. Agriculture meant switching to the cultivation of a small number of annual grasses (wheat, barley, rice in Eurasia, maize in the Americas) for which the grain constitutes a large part of their biomass; they are weeds, grasses that thrive in disrupted environments, rapidly reproducing before grasses adapted for more stable environments squeeze them out. Cultivating them meant periodically disrupting the environment - hard agricultural labor. Relying on a few productive crops instead of hundreds available to the hunters-gatherers meant famine when the crops failed due to a disease (as in Ireland in the 1840s) or a pest. Cereals are not very nutritious food, and gruel is a much worse baby food than mother's milk; skeletons of farmers show that they were much sicker than hunters-gatherers (but there were many more of the former). Agriculture spread slowly through Europe in the Neolithic and Bronze Age; agricultural productivity increased in the Middle Ages through introduction of such technologies as the horse collar. Yet before mid-twentieth century, agricultural expansion was extensive: colonizing the Americas and Australasia (pushing away the natives) through Khrushchev's Virgin Lands campaign. By 1960, the world has almost run out of arable land, yet there were 3 billion people in it, and tens of millions more were born each year; Paul Ehrlich and other environmental alarmists were predicting famine. This did not happen because of the Green Revolution. Dwarf varieties of wheat and rice have a higher percentage of biomass stored in the grains than non-dwarf ones. Also, if you grow non-dwarf varieties of cereals with too much fertilizer, the plant would "lodge": the seeds would be too heavy for the stem to support, and the plant would topple; with dwarf varieties the maximum amount of fertilizer is much greater. Dwarf wheat, which took over 70% of all the planted area by the turn of the century (as well as dwarf rice and hybrid maize), allowed the 6 billions to be fed, but it required far more fertilizer than manure and crop rotation could provide. Artificial fertilizer production skyrocketed to the point where half of all nitrogen fixed on planet Earth comes from human-made artificial fertilizers and half from the rest of the biosphere. The new agriculture also relies heavily on irrigation and pesticides and therefore on outside energy and fossil fuels.

The second half of the book attacks many targets in modern agriculture and the food business, concentrating on the United States. Agribusiness companies such as Archer Daniel Midlands enjoy oligopsony when dealing with farmers (but do not take over the fields, since farmers exploit themselves much harder than the company would be allowed to exploit them). Government subsidies of farmers translate into profits for ADM, a dollar in profit for each $11 in subsidies; the ADM executive interviewed by Manning calls this situation socialism. The USDA is more concerned with getting rid of surplus commodities than with better nutrition of the populace; it periodically republishes its food pyramid depending on which commodities have a surplus. Sugar from Central America-grown sugar cane costs less than maize-derived high-fructose syrup, which in turn costs less than sugar from U.S.-grown sugar cane; thus a sugar tariff benefits not only domestic sugar growers, but also ADM. Most maize grown in the United States is not eaten directly by humans; it is either fed to domestic animals or processed; the fertilizer runs off into the Mississippi river and into the Gulf of Mexico, where it kills fish and shrimp; thus, high-quality protein is sacrificed for the sake of low-quality protein and fat (though Manning gives no numbers). As in Victorian England, the poor eat too much nutritionally poor fast food and sugar; unlike Victorian England, they are increasingly obese and diabetic. Manning argues for "counteragriculture": variety of crops, variety of food, locally grown food, minimizing ecological damage; he also praises hunting. He writes admiringly about some organic farmer who is getting high yields, and about Chez Panisse, an organic restaurant in Berkeley (the student co-op where I lived in 1995 had a cookbook from it, I think; some members of the co-op also grew another agricultural commodity, one of America's biggest cash crops, though they did it in an industrialized way).

What to do with all this grain?
What did we lose when we went from roaming the earth in social bands searching for food to settling down in one place to cultivate crops and raise animals? We went from a community partaking of a varied diet that supported one another when the hunt was good to one where wealth and power belonged to those with the biggest grain storage bins, animals are treated abominably, and the majority of our calories come from grains. Grains become the ultimate commodity: easily stockpiled and providing dense carbohydrate energy but poor nutrition.

Manning: "This is not to say that hunter-gatherers did not experience need, hard times, even starvation just as all other animals do. We would be hard-pressed, however, to find communities of any social animal except modern humans in which an individual in a community has access to fifty, a hundred, a thousands times, or even twice as many resources as another. Yet such communities are the rule among post-agricultural humans."

I don't believe this book sets out to offer solutions to the problem of agriculture, but it does a fine job in journalist style of putting forth the various elements that led to the adoption of agriculture and the problems it is causing both humans and the planet. Manning covers such diverse subjects as the development of the human brain, famine, cannibalism, diseases of agriculture, food taboos and fads, and how grains came to dominate the American landscape.

When we look at agriculture today, we see a small number of industrial giants growing rich from the production of a few grains-wheat, corn, and rice-along with hay and the starchy potato. Science and industry concentrate their efforts on maximizing the potential of these commodities through genetic modification, fertilization, and improvements in cultivation and harvesting. Small farms are no longer self-determined producers benefiting their communities, but are serfs at the whim and mercy of commodity buyers-and they're disappearing.

Manning: "This is a book not just about agriculture but about the fundamental dehumanization that occurred with agriculture. It will argue that most of humanity struck a bitter bargain over the past ten thousand years, trading in a large measure of our sensual lives for the bit of security that comes with agriculture."

These tax-supported commodities aren't foods that feed people but grains that are grown in excess, traded, fed to livestock, put in every conceivable packaged product, and then dumped on underdeveloped nations putting local farmers out of business and causing malnourishment and obesity. The concentration of farm land into grain production led to such policies as adding ethanol to fuel and the development of USDA food pyramid. The food pyramid doesn't reflect nutritional need but the interests of food producers benefiting from the glut.

Manning writes: "I have come to think of agriculture not as farming, but as a dangerous and consuming beast of a social system." I have to agree. Farming to me is the practice of working with the land to produce food that nourishes people, food that can be directly eaten and not processed into something else. Farming is community. Agriculture is exploitation. Perhaps after reading this book you'll believe that also.

The wrong subtitle - AGRICULTURE didn't hijack civilization
The sins of agriculture.

Let's see, according to this publication we can enumerate a number of sins heaped upon
us by agriculture. A few of the main ones that are forcefully argued in this book are:

* it creates poverty
* it destroys the soil
* it causes poor governance
* it depletes water supplies
* it pollutes water supplies
* it malnourishes the population
* it promotes over-population

I've no major argument with any of these accusations. However, I'd like to point out that
publication and distribution of the book itself causes:

* depletion of forests
* depletion of water supplies
* degradation of soils
* global warming via burning of fossil fuels to support the infrastructure required to
produce & distribute the book.
* Ocean acidification for the same reasons.

Perhaps you get the point. Although I can't disagree with the general findings of the
author - and his basic hypothesis is largely proven - the problem is HE'S ATTACKING THE
WRONG PROBLEM (IMO).

People reproduce. If we reproduce at a rate faster than we die, our population grows. If
our population grows too fast relative to the resources we have, we seem to invariably
harm ourselves with the solutions we craft to accommodate the growth.

The more accurate subtitle whould be "How Agriculture to Support Population Growth Hijacked
Civilization."

Against the Grain
A great book.It takes the reader to places and perspectives related to food and agriculture that are relevant and personal.Placed in a historical context, Manning exposes grains in ways rarely brought
to light.He addresses whether grains chose us or we chose them, the significance of agriculture to society and civilization, the dietary aspects of eating grains, and political/economic impacts on global grain use. He shares personal lifestyle information - but not too much - so that the reader feels a deeper connection to the world through his or her grain use..

Everyone should read this!
Against the Grain discusses the connections between agriculture and poverty in our species.

"The assumption is that nomads and hunter-gatherers, who usually traded with civilized folk, knew a good thing when they saw it and so simply adopted the farming technology. In other words, a bunch of guys who spent their time running around the woods, hunting and fishing and trading meat for sex, one day saw someone hoeing weeds and said to themselves, 'What a fine idea! Let's go do that instead.' Is it possible that the technology did not spread entirely by adoption, that hunter-gatherers were wiped out or displaced by an advancing agricultural imperialism? The record suggests that although some adoption did occur, by and large farming spread by genocide." p45

His description of the modern world is not any sunnier.

Against the Grain is much easier to read than Manning's Grassland which was thick with Pirsig-esque tangents. (I am very impressed with both works.) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

This is the seminal source for Biodynamic farming.
Before Organic farming and gardening, a product of the 1960's revival ofawareness of the importance of healthy food and environmental awarenessthere were already healthy roots in Western Mysticism. (Read alsoBlavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater) In 1926 Rudolph Steiner delivered aseries of lectures to a loyal group of Anthroposophists in Koberwitz,Austria.Reading the text of the lectures is a rare, deep draught of theriver of arcane knowledge.In order to absorb it, you must float yourselfin it and sink down into it, perhaps to drown.This is not a how-to book. There are some very successful applications of the principles and processesdescribed in the lectures in Australia and North America, which includesthe Biodynamic Association in Kimberton, Pennsylvania.Organic gardeningis only the first step in reclaiming sustainable and healthy agriculture,and the application of the principles outlined in this book may be animportant next step. ... Read more