Preface. Industrial agriculture is destroying topsoil, aquifers, and biodiversity with land use changes and pesticides. Pests adapt within 5 years on average to toxic chemicals (see Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen” below), and scientists are running out of new poisons.  Someday farming will be forced to go back to being organic as pesticides stop working, and material inputs such as oil (diesel for tractors/harvesters) and natural gas decline (fertilizer), just as plants themselves are constrained by Liebig’s Law of the minimum.

Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com  author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, 2015, Springer, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, and “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Podcasts: Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, KunstlerCast 253, KunstlerCast278, Peak Prosperity , XX2 report

Industrial Agriculture          

• Peter Golob. 2002. Crop Post-Harvest (how to keep pests away after harvest)
• Dyer. 2014. Chasing the red queen. The evolutionary race between agricultural pests and poisons.
• D. Hayes. Cowed. The hidden impact of 93 million cows on America’s health, economy, politics, culture, and environment
• Mann. 2011. 1493. Uncovering the new world Columbus created.
• NRC. 2015. Framework for assessing effects of the food system
• Eric Schlosser. 2002. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal           
• J. Hatfield. 2014: Agriculture. Climate Change Impacts in the United States.
• M. Maren. 2002. The Road to Hell. The ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity  
• Steven Stoll. 1998. The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California     
• Richard Street. 2004. Beasts of the Field. A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913.    
• Richard Walker. 2004. The Conquest of Bread. 150 years of Agribusiness in California.
• Julie Guthman. 2004. Agrarian dreams. The paradox of organic farming in California         
• Kimbrell. 2002. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture   
• Jim Hightower. 1978. Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: A report of the Agribusiness Accountability Project on the Failure of America’s Land Grant College Complex   
• Carolyn Johnsen. 2003. Raising a Stink: The Struggle over Factory Hog Farms in Nebraska.
• M. Kurlansky. Milk!  A 10,000-year food fracas
• R. Dunn. Never out of season: how having the food we want when we want it threatens our food supply
• A.Harris. Fruits of Eden. David Fairchild and America’s plant hunters
• R. Kelly. 1998. Battling the Inland Sea. Floods, public policy, and the Sacramento Valley
• K. Eichenwald. 2001. The Informant: A True Story
• M. Montgomery. 2004. A cow’s life  The surprising history of cattle
• J. Opie. 2018. Ogallala: Water for a dry land
• E. Brady. Humboldt: Life on America’s marijuana frontier

Sustainable Agriculture       

• John Jeavons. 2002. How to grow more vegetables & fruits, nuts berries, grains..on less land than you can imagine
• Jim Bender. 1994. Future Harvest: Pesticide-Free Farming    
• B. C. Mollison. 1997.  Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual   

The Joys and Hardships of Family Farms 

• E. Agnew. Back from the Land: How Young Americans Went to Nature in the 1970s
• J. Stratton. Pioneer Women: Voices from the Kansas Frontier
• Mildred Kalish. 2007. Little Heathens. Hard times & high spirits on an Iowa Farm during the great depression.     
• B. Greenwood. 1998. A pioneer sampler. The daily life of a pioneer family in 1840  
• R. Montgomery. 2004. A Cow’s Life  The Surprising History of Cattle      
• David Masumoto. 2009. Epitaph for a Peach, Four Seasons on my Family Farm    
• Gene Logsdon. 1994. The Contrary Farmer