Sacred Cows and Hot Potatoes challenges many of the assumptions of current agricultural policies—such as equating "farm" with "rural," high farm prices with high farm incomes, or farm programs with food programs—and examines the agrarian roots of these policies. From the origins of agrarian myths to the latest controversies over farming and the environment, this book provides an overview of the use and abuse of agrarian values in policymaking. Illustrated with pictures, cartoons, and graphs, the book will appeal to a broad audience, including policymakers, rural sociologists, agricultural economists, political scientists, ethicists, and the interested public.
From the origins of agrarian myths to controversies over farming and the environment, this book provides an overview of the use and abuse of agrarian values in policy making.
Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes examines the patterns, causes, and consequences of current land use decisions in the United States, particularly the conversion of farmland to housing, roads, and other development. Changes in land use are the result of complex interactions among law, economics, landscape characteristics, social and political forces, ethics, and aesthetics. By examining farmland loss from each of these perspectives, and then integrating the results into policy recommendations, Under the Blade makes an important contribution to the ongoing debate on the optimal use of a finite resourceland. }In 1998, the last farm in Des Plaines, Illinois was subdivided. Seven acres along the Niobrara River in north-central Nebraska sold for USD5700 per acre, twenty times the price for agricultural use. Waukesha County, Wisconsin, although still largely in agriculture, has been almost entirely zoned for small lot subdivisions. Nationwide, the cumulative effect of thousands of individual land use decisions is an orgiastic devouring of the countryside that consumes at least 1.4 million acres of rural land each year, and fragments a much larger area. The effects on landscape functions include loss of agricultural production, water pollution, increases in local runoff and flooding, loss of habitat and biodiversity, and the loss of natural beauty. In exchange we get malls, retail strips, and an ugly sprawl that degrades people and community. How have we come to this, and more importantly, how might we find a better, sustainable approach to the use of land? Land use decisions are the result of complex interactions among law, economics, landscape characteristics, population growth, social and political forces, ethics, and aesthetics. Under the Blade: The Conversion of Agricultural Landscapes examines the loss of farmland and other rural lands from each of these perspectives, and shows how interactions among different factors greatly complicate sustainable land management. Included throughout the seven main chapters of the book are descriptions of some of the tools and strategies that can be used to preserve farmland and guide development. The application of these tools is illustrated by 22 case studies of towns and regions throughout the United States, each with a somewhat different challenge, response, and degree of success (or failure).Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Protestant theologian hanged by the Nazis in 1945, stated that the ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children. Our current choices in the use of the land are among the most important factors shaping that future world, and Under the Blade demonstrates that the quality of that future is far from certain.
Rural development policies have historically focused primarily on increasing agricultural productivity, but this volume demonstrates the need for a much broader approach as rural producers become increasingly integrated into the global economy. Followi
The Spirit of the Soil challenges environmentalists to think more deeply and creatively about agriculture. Paul B. Thompson identifies four `worldviews' which tackle agricultural ethics according to different philosophical priorities; productionism, stewardship, economics and holism. He examines current issues such as the use of pesticides and biotechnology from these ethical perspectives. This book achieves an open-ended account of sustainability designed to minimise hubris and help us to recapture the spirit of the soil.
Organizations such as the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth are familiar to anyone with an interest in environmental protection. As activist groups, they played by the same rules for years. But in 1994, the rules changed. With the Republican takeover of Congress, environmental groups faced sweeping changes in federal policies that threatened the enforcement of environmental laws. As these organizations intensified their efforts to meet these challenges, they also altered their electoral strategies and political spending patterns. This book traces those actions and shows what they mean for the future of environmentalism in the political arena. While environmental advocacy groups have become bigger and better funded in recent years, so have the corporate interests that compete with them for the attention of public and politicians. The Green Agenda in American Politics offers a new look at environmental advocacy that focuses on contemporary lobbying, electioneering, and agenda setting in this new context. Drawing on interviews with activists from a wide range of organizations, Robert Duffy describes what environmental groups actually do when lobbying officials or the public. He examines activity at both national and state levels to emphasize their growing use of websites, email, and action alert networks to conduct more sophisticated grassroots campaigns, and he shows how they are devoting more funds to unregulated forms of spending such as independent expenditure, issue advocacy advertising, and public education campaigns. Duffy also tracks emerging trends in interest group politics and provides an overview of activism through the early 1990s. He then documents the emergence of more aggressive action after 1994, such as providing campaign services to candidates and mounting voter registration drives. He also shows how state and local groups have begun to play more important roles in the wake of the rollback of federal environmental regulations. Brimming with new insights into interest group lobbies in general and contemporary environmental groups in particular, Duffy's book opens a new window on the influence of Big Money in the supposedly democratic electoral process.
During the first half of the twentieth century, degradation, poverty, and hopelessness were commonplace for African Americans who lived in the South's countryside, either on farms or in rural communities. Many southern blacks sought relief from these conditions by migrating to urban centers. Many others, however, continued to live in rural areas. Scholars of African American rural history in the South have been concerned primarily with the experience of blacks as sharecroppers, tenant farmers, textile workers, and miners. Less attention has been given to other aspects of the rural African American experience during the early twentieth century. African American Life in the Rural South, 1900-1950 provides important new information about African American culture, social life, and religion, as well as economics, federal policy, migration, and civil rights. The essays particularly emphasize the efforts of African Americans to negotiate the white world in the southern countryside. Filling a void in southern studies, this outstanding collection provides a substantive overview of the subject. Scholars, students, and teachers of African American, southern, agricultural, and rural history will find this work invaluable.
Most issues in American political life are complex and multifaceted, subject to multiple interpretations and points of view. How issues are framed matters enormously for the way they are understood and debated. For example, is affirmative action a just means toward a diverse society, or is it reverse discrimination? Is the war on terror a defense of freedom and liberty, or is it an attack on privacy and other cherished constitutional rights? Bringing together some of the leading researchers in American politics, Framing American Politics explores the roles that interest groups, political elites, and the media play in framing political issues for the mass public. The contributors address some of the most hotly debated foreign and domestic policies in contemporary American life, focusing on both the origins and process of framing and its effects on citizens. In so doing, these scholars clearly demonstrate how frames can both enhance and hinder political participation and understanding.
