Category Archives: Agriculture

Book review of “1493 Uncovering the new world Columbus Created”

Posted on August 29, 2017 by

[ This book will be included in the “must read” category of my giant booklist when I get around to updating it. This book isn’t just about the past, the implications reverberate into the postcarbon future.  Will slavery return without … Continue reading →

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Chemical industrial farming is unsustainable. Why poison ourselves when pesticides don’t save more of our crops than in the past?

Posted on March 16, 2017 by

Pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides destroy soil, ecosystems, and a third of the crop is still lost to pests, just as in the many millennia of farming before chemicals. [ This is a book review of Dyer’s “Chasing the Red Queen”, … Continue reading →

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After the harvest – protecting food from rats, mold, insects, fire, and bacteria

Posted on January 28, 2017 by

[ Current post-harvest storage is totally out of scale with what future generations will need. Now we have mainly gargantuan grain elevators, some so huge they can store enough grain for most of the U.S. for weeks at a time.  … Continue reading →

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The Back to the Land Movement: why it failed and why we need to try again

Posted on December 19, 2016 by

[ This is my book review of “Back from the Land: how young Americans went to nature in the 1970s, and why they came back”.   Some succeeded, but most failed, and there are lessons to be learned from the previous … Continue reading →

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Livestock diseases, Science Mag Review of “Arresting Contagion”

Posted on May 7, 2015 by

Science 17 April 2015: Vol. 348 no. 6232 p. 294 DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa7672 The fever on the farm Arresting Contagion Science, Policy, and Conflicts over Animal Disease Control Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode Harvard University Press, 2015. 477 pp. … Continue reading →

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Become a Bison rancher

Posted on September 21, 2014 by

Far more buffalo can be grazed per acre than cattle. It’s likely wild bison will return to the Great Plains in the future.   Already there are fewer people in areas where the Ogalla aquifer has been depleted than when Native … Continue reading →

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A book review of “Russia’s Food Policies and Globalization”

Posted on April 16, 2014 by

[ This is a book review of Stephen Wegren’s 2005 book “Russia’s Food Policies and Globalization”.  Related articles: Inside North Korea’s Environmental Collapse Who Lives, Who dies in a never-ending energy crisis. Book review of Nothing to Envy. Ordinary Lives … Continue reading →

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Who lives, who dies in a never-ending energy crisis. Book review of Nothing to Envy. Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Posted on April 6, 2014 by

[ The source of much of this information comes from Barbara Demick’s 2010 “Nothing to Envy. Ordinary lives in North Korea”.  But first I summarize why and how energy shortages led to the hardships chronicled in Demick’s book. Related posts: … Continue reading →

Posted in Agriculture, Energy, North Korea | 1 Comment

Muscle Power

Posted on March 1, 2014 by

Steven Vogel   Prime Mover: A Natural History of Muscle    W. W. Norton Reviewed in June 2004. Natural History Magazine Today we have machines for making people move in place: run, walk uphill, push pedals back and forth or up and … Continue reading →

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Book Review of Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live

Posted on August 3, 2013 by

Alice Friedemann’s review of: Marlene Zuk. 2013. Paleofantasy: What Evolution really tells us about sex, diet, and how we live. My first introduction to Evolutionary Psychology was “The Adapted Mind” which posited we’re unhappy because of the tremendous difference between … Continue reading →

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