Showing titles in Agricultural & Food Sciences

The Reindeer Chronicles takes listeners on a global tour of Earth repair, with visits to unsung heroes who are pushing the boundaries of ecological restoration to show how even the world’s most wounded places can be revived. The book begins in China’s Loess Plateau, where a landmark project successfully restored a blighted region the size of Belgium, lifting millions of people out of poverty.

Taking its title from a chilling warning made by the United Nations that the world’s soils could be lost within a lifetime, Sixty Harvests Left uncovers how the food industry is threatening the planet. Put simply, without soils there will be no food: game over. And time is running out.

More than a decade after Michael Pollan's game-changing The Omnivore's Dilemma transformed the conversation about what we eat, a combination of global diet trends and corporate interests have put American agriculture into a state of 'quiet emergency', from dangerous drought in California - which grows more than 50 percent of the fruits and vegetables we eat - to catastrophic topsoil loss in the 'breadbasket' heartland of the United States.

As industry and technology proliferate in modern society, sustainability has jumped to the forefront of contemporary political and environmental discussions. The balance between progress and the Earth's ability to provide for its inhabitants grows increasingly precarious as we attempt to achieve sustainable development.

Much like nature, this audiobook is both simple and complex. Zietsman has taken great care to create both a simple technical guide as well as a philosophic declaration about complex human and environmental nuances, all in one volume. Several years from now, many will look back upon this book as foundational to the restoration of—and relationships between—man, cattle, and veld. Zietsman puts forth a much-needed critique of man and his actions over the past century as well as personal stories as contra-example to the narratives that have dominated the ranching world.

Human efforts to move crops from one place to another have been a key driving force in history. Crops have been on the move for millennia, from wildlands into fields, from wetlands to dry zones, from one imperial colony to another. This book is a bold but approachable attempt to redefine historical inquiry based on the “cropscape”: the assemblage of people, places, creatures, technologies, and other elements that form around a crop.

Hugelkultur raised bed gardening. This is perhaps one of the most ancient of the no-dig gardening techniques for growing fruit and vegetables, originating in the Black Forest region of Germany, it has been around for many centuries. Created as a way to grow food in areas where good arable land was limited, the Hugelkultur makes use of material that would otherwise be discarded as useless - forest debris and other garden waste.

Whether you want to raise goats for the money or just for the fun of it - you’ve come to the right place! Have you always wanted to have goats running around in your backyard, but were intimidated by everything it would entail? With this clear-cut and easy-to-understand guide, you’ll feel completely confident in your ability to look after your herd, and you’ll quickly find yourself part of a growing and heartwarming community of goat farmers. No more doubts, no more feeling overwhelmed, and no more not knowing where to start.

Have you ever dreamed of becoming more self-reliant, growing your own food, and learning the skills to thrive in any environment? Whether you live on a rural homestead or in the middle of the city, The Ultimate Self-Sufficiency Guide offers you the knowledge and practical tools to live a more independent, fulfilling life. This 2-in-1 collection combines homesteading mastery and beekeeping essentials for beginners, helping you gain the confidence to start building your sustainable future from scratch.

By explaining the lean system for identifying and eliminating waste and introducing efficiency in every aspect of the farm operation, The Lean Farm makes the case that small-scale farming can be an attractive career option for young people who are interested in growing food for their community. Working smarter, not harder, also prevents the kind of burnout that start-up farmers often encounter in the face of long, hard, backbreaking labor. Lean principles grew out of the Japanese automotive industry, but they are now being followed by progressive farms around the world....

Growing vegetables in a raised bed grid garden (a.k.a. square foot garden) is a great way to maximize your vegetable growing efforts, and at the same time dramatically reduce your workload. A grid garden is simple to assemble and operate. Growing in one-foot squares means that you can truly maximize your vegetable production in an environment that is great fun to operate and will assure a regular harvest of healthy vegetables. If you are growing vegetables in raised beds, then your production and crop rotation can be maximized by using the simple techniques employed in grid gardening.

Across the world, chefs, farmers, plant scientists and backyard growers are doing something extraordinary: creating new generations of fruit, vegetables and cereals, all bred specifically to flourish locally, taste delicious, and contribute to our food future. In The Accidental Seed Heroes, Adam Alexander dons his seed detective homburg to meet these twenty-first century seed heroes, who are not only championing traditional varieties but also breeding delicious new ones that will help create a sustainable future for our planet.

In Fermentation as Metaphor, stemming from his personal obsession with all things fermented, Katz meditates on his art and work, drawing connections between microbial communities and aspects of human culture: politics, religion, social and cultural movements, art, music, sexuality, identity, and even our individual thoughts and feelings. He informs his arguments with his vast knowledge of the fermentation process, which he describes as a slow, gentle, steady, yet unstoppable force for change.

The Ultimate Guide to Homesteading is a valuable resource for learning about growing, freezing, canning, and storing fruits, vegetables, and herbs to feed your family year-round. You’ll also discover the amazing possibilities open to you when you raise livestock for food and fiber, including information on co-ops, choosing a butcher or slaughterhouse, and how best to house and feed your animals.

The definitive account of one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history, which killed nineteen elite firefighters of the Granite Mountain Hotshots and also inspired the major motion picture Only the Brave. “A tear-jerking classic.”—Outside Named One of the Best Books of the Year by...

My Family and Other Animals meets The Secret Life of Cows: this rediscovered gem tells the charming tale of how a baby llama transformed a Welsh farming family forever. Ruth Ruck's family lives on a Welsh mountain farm, no strangers to cow pats on the carpet and nesting hens in the larder. When dark days strike, they embark on a farming experiment to cheer them all up - but raising a baby llama proves more of an adventure than expected.

In this profoundly human and moving narrative, the bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of the precarious state of our planet and what it means to be a human on the front lines of this existential crisis. His new uplifting book, Hope Dies Last, is a literary evocation of our current predicament and the core optimism of the human species against the worst odds we have ever faced.

As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the same reasons they are so valuable as a source of food: they are intelligent, self-sufficient, and omnivorous. What's more, he argues, we ignore our historic partnership with these astonishing animals at our peril.

The twelve sheep have come into his life at just the right moment. After years of hard work, John felt a deep tiredness creeping up on him, a sadness that he couldn't shrug off. Having always sought spiritual guidance, he comes to realize that, in addition to the soothing words of literature and philosophy, perhaps the way ahead involves this simple flock of sheep. In the hard work of livestock rearing, in the long nights in the shed helping the sheep to lamb, he can reflect on what life truly means.

Looking to get started keeping backyard poultry? Let the down-to-earth, common-sense advice in The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Keeping Chickens, Expanded & Revised be your guide. Since The Chicken Whisperer’s Guide to Keeping Chickens was first published in 2011, tens of thousands of people...