Preface. Industrial agriculture is destroying topsoil, aquifers, and biodiversity with land use changes, heavy equipment, and pesticides — which only work for 5 years on average (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) decline.
A land grab has been underway for many years in nations that can’t feed themselves. China, India, Saudi Arabia, and other nations have leased vast areas of Africa, Patagonia, Brazil, Paraguay, Ukraine, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Cambodia, and foreign investors own 30 million acres of US farmland. Read all about it here: F Pearce. The Land Grabbers: The New Fight over Who Owns the Earth.
Alice Friedemann www.energyskeptic.com Author of Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy; When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the Future of Transportation”, Barriers to Making Algal Biofuels, & “Crunch! Whole Grain Artisan Chips and Crackers”. Women in ecology Podcasts: WGBH, Jore, Planet: Critical, Crazy Town, Collapse Chronicles, Derrick Jensen, Practical Prepping, Kunstler 253 &278, Peak Prosperity, Index of best energyskeptic posts
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History of Agriculture
- JC Scott. Against the Grain: A deep history of the earliest states
- Richard Street. 2004. Beasts of the Field. A Narrative History of California Farmworkers, 1769-1913.
- R Walker. The Conquest of Bread. 150 years of Agribusiness in California.
- Julie Guthman. Agrarian dreams. The paradox of organic farming in California
- R Kelly. Battling the Inland Sea. Floods, public policy, and the Sacramento Valley
- A Harris. Fruits of Eden: David Fairchild and Americas Plant Hunters
- Richard Winston. Life in the Middle Ages
- B Fussell. The Story of Corn
Industrial Agriculture
- Peter Golob. Crop Post-Harvest (how to keep pests away after harvest)
- Dyer. 2014. Chasing the red queen. The evolutionary race between agricultural pests and poisons.
- V Smil. Harvesting the Biosphere: What We Have Taken from Nature
- M Arax. The Dreamt Land: Chasing Water and Dust Across California
- D. Hayes. Cowed. The hidden impact of 93 million cows on America’s health, economy, politics, culture, and environment
- Mann. 1493: Uncovering the new world Columbus created
- EA Wrigley. The Path to Sustained Growth: England’s Transition from an Organic Economy to an Industrial Revolution
- DR Montgomery. Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization
- NRC. Framework for assessing effects of the food system
- E Schlosser. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal
- J Hatfield. Agriculture. Climate Change Impacts in the United States.
- M Maren. The Road to Hell. The ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity
- S Stoll. The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California
- Kimbrell. 2002. Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture
- J Hightower. 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
- 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
- Jason Bradford. The Future is Rural. Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification
- 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
- M Kalish. Little Heathens. Hard times & high spirits on an Iowa Farm during the great depression.
- B Greenwood. A pioneer sampler. The daily life of a pioneer family in 1840
- R Montgomery. A Cow’s Life The Surprising History of Cattle
- D Masumoto. Epitaph for a Peach, Four Seasons on my Family Farm
- Gene Logsdon. 1994. The Contrary Farmer