A menu for an edible future. In a world expected to reach a staggering population of 9 billion by 2050, and with global temperatures rising fast, humanity must fundamentally change the way it grows and consumes food. But can we produce enough food to feed ourselves sustainably for an uncertain future? How will agriculture adapt to a climate change? How will climate change determine what we eat? Will we really be eating bugs? Uncertain Harvest questions scientists, chefs, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, philosophers, and engineers working on the global future of food on how to make a more equitable, safe, sustainable, and plentiful food future. Examining cutting-edge research on the science, culture, and economics of food, the authors present a roadmap for a global food policy, while examining eight foods that could save us: algae, caribou, kale, millet, tuna, crickets, milk, and rice.
A reporter stumbles on a plot by an international corporation to use genetic technology to monopolize the world's food production and destroy ecosystems. His pursuit of the truth leads him on a vigorous and life-threatening search across the globe. While attending an economic conference in the Austrian Alps, New York business reporter, Ed Decker learns that Naturtek plans to replace traditional crops with their patented "terminator seeds" that produce plants that die after a single harvest. When Decker learns that the scheme also threatens insect life, the natural pollinators for essential crops, his investigation moves from a business story to something even more ominous. His pursuit of one bio-scientist after another leads him from Austria to research campuses in Boston, and ultimately to the jungles of Oaxaca, Mexico where Naturtek is carrying out crop experimentation. Threats and assaults against him are followed by a string of murders. With the journalism industry crumbling, the police strangely ineffectual, and his scientific collaborator, an ambitious young entomologist, playing her own game, Ed reaches out for help to his brother, a retired Iraq veteran. As the two gather evidence from laboratories and indigenous communities, they try to repair an estrangement rooted in their mother's death and their father's suicide.
Lives from an invisible community—the migrant farmworkers of the United States The Grapes of Wrath brought national attention to the condition of California’s migrant farmworkers in the 1930s. Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers’ grape and lettuce boycotts captured the imagination of the United States in the 1960s and ’70s. Yet today, the stories of the more than 800,000 men, women, and children working in California’s fields—one third of the nation’s agricultural work force—are rarely heard, despite the persistence of wage theft, dangerous working conditions, and uncertain futures. This book of oral histories makes the reality of farm work visible in accounts of hardship, bravery, solidarity, and creativity in California’s fields, as real people struggle to win new opportunities for future generations. Among the narrators: Maricruz, a single mother fired from a packing plant after filing a sexual assault complaint against her supervisor. Roberto, a vineyard laborer in the scorching Coachella Valley who became an advocate for more humane working conditions after his teenage son almost died of heatstroke. Oscar, an elementary school teacher in Salinas who wants to free his students from a life in the fields, the fate that once awaited him as a child.
Counterculture flourished nationwide in the 1960s and 1970s, and while the hippies of Haight–Ashbury occupied the public eye, a faction of back to the landers were quietly creating their own haven off the beaten path in the Arkansas Ozarks. In Hipbillies, Jared Phillips combines oral histories and archival resources to weave the story of the Ozarks and its population of country beatniks into the national narrative, showing how the back to the landers engaged in “deep revolution” by sharing their ideas on rural development, small farm economy, and education with the locals—and how they became a fascinating part of a traditional region’s coming to terms with the modern world in the process.
Pays tribute to the women behind the local, sustainable, and quality foods of northwestern Michigan. Northern Harvest: Twenty Michigan Women in Food and Farminglooks at the female culinary pioneers who have put northern Michigan on the map for food, drink, and farming. Emita Brady Hill interviews women who share their own stories of becoming the cooks, bakers, chefs, and farmers that they are today—each even sharing a delicious recipe or two. These stories are as important to tracing the gastronomic landscape in America as they are to honoring the history, agriculture, and community of Michigan. Divided into six sections, Northern Harvest celebrates very different women who converged in an important region of Michigan and helped transform it into the flourishing culinary Eden it is today. Hill speaks with orchardists and farmers about planting their own fruit trees and making the decision to transition their farms over to organic. She hears from growers who have been challenged by the northern climate and have made exclusive use of fair trade products in their business. Readers are introduced to the first-ever cheesemaker in the Leelanau area and a pastry chef who is doing it all from scratch. Readers also get a sneak peek into the origins of Traverse City institutions such as Folgarelli’s Market and Wine Shop and Trattoria Stella. Hill catches up with local cookbook authors and nationally known food writers. She interviews the founder of two historic homesteads that introduce visitors to a way of living many of us only know from history books. These oral histories allow each woman to tell her story as she chooses, in her own words, with her own emphasis, and her own discretion or indiscretions. Northern Harvest is a celebration of northern Michigan’s rich culinary tradition and the women who made it so. Hungry readers will swallow this book whole.
A stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. "This is a shattering work by a literary master."--The Boston Globe A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses--and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.
In a time of climate change and mass extinction, how we garden matters more than ever: “An outstanding and deeply passionate book.” —Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals Plenty of books tell home gardeners and professional landscape designers how to garden sustainably, what plants to use, and what resources to explore. Yet few examine why our urban wildlife gardens matter so much—not just for ourselves, but for the larger human and animal communities. Our landscapes push aside wildlife and in turn diminish our genetically programmed love for wildness. How can we get ourselves back into balance through gardens, to speak life's language and learn from other species? Benjamin Vogt addresses why we need a new garden ethic, and why we urgently need wildness in our daily lives—lives sequestered in buildings surrounded by monocultures of lawn and concrete that significantly harm our physical and mental health. He examines the psychological issues around climate change and mass extinction as a way to understand how we are short-circuiting our response to global crises, especially by not growing native plants in our gardens. Simply put, environmentalism is not political; it's social justice for all species marginalized today and for those facing extinction tomorrow. By thinking deeply and honestly about our built landscapes, we can create a compassionate activism that connects us more profoundly to nature and to one another.
The story of life on a French olive farm continues with this moving memoir of hard work, hard luck, and waiting for the return of happiness. Carol Drinkwater and her husband, Michel, arrive at their villa in Provence in anticipation of another glorious summer. Unfortunately, they find the farm unkempt and suffering from lack of rainfall. When their gardener, Monsieur Quashia, finally shows up, he cheerfully explains the shed-building project he’s working on as a surprise for them—a surprise that will send their expenses skyrocketing. But there are bigger problems to come than wild boars tearing through fences and other everyday challenges of farming. After a terrifying accident in Monte Carlo and a hospital stay, Michel is barely functional, and Carol soon realizes she must fend for herself. Burdened with problems from a financial reversal to the threat of nearby wildfires, she will experience firsthand the uncertainties that have plagued farmers since the dawn of agriculture—and hold on to hope that in the end, nature will provide. “A storyteller of great economy and deftness.” —The Telegraph
The steadfast and sturdy Continental Op has been summoned to the town of Personville—known as Poisonville—a dusty mining community splintered by competing factions of gangsters and petty criminals. The Op has been hired by Donald Willsson, publisher of the local newspaper, who gave little indication about the reason for the visit. No sooner does the Op arrive, than the body count begins to climb . . . starting with his client. With this last honest citizen of Poisonville murdered, the Op decides to stay on and force a reckoning—even if that means taking on an entire town. Red Harvest is more than a superb crime novel: it is a classic exploration of corruption and violence in the American grain.
With a revolutionary new "Climate Battery" design for near-net-zero heating and cooling By the turn of the nineteenth century, thousands of acres of glass houses surrounded large American cities, becoming a commonplace symbol of the market garden and nursery trades. But the possibilities of the indoor garden to transform our homes and our lives remain largely unrealized. In this groundbreaking book, Jerome Osentowski, one of North America's most accomplished permaculture designers, presents a wholly new approach to a very old horticultural subject. In The Forest Garden Greenhouse, he shows how bringing the forest garden indoors is not only possible, but doable on unlikely terrain and in cold climates, using near-net-zero technology. Different from other books on greenhouse design and management, this book advocates for an indoor agriculture using permaculture design concepts--integration, multi-functions, perennials, and polycultures--that take season extension into new and important territory. Osentowski, director and founder of Central Rocky Mountain Permaculture Institute (CRMPI), farms at 7,200 feet on a steep, rocky hillside in Colorado, incorporating deep, holistic permaculture design with practical common sense. It is at this site, high on a mountaintop, where Osentowski (along with architect and design partner Michael Thompson) has been designing and building revolutionary greenhouses that utilize passive and active solar technology via what they call the "climate battery"--a subterranean air-circulation system that takes the hot, moist, ambient air from the greenhouse during the day, stores it in the soil, and discharges it at night--that can offer tropical and Mediterranean climates at similarly high altitudes and in cold climates (and everywhere else). Osentowski's greenhouse designs, which can range from the backyard homesteader to commercial greenhouses, are completely ecological and use a simple design that traps hot and cold air and regulates it for best possible use. The book is part case study of the amazing greenhouses at CRMPI and part how-to primer for anyone interested in a more integrated model for growing food and medicine in a greenhouse. With detailed design drawings, photos, and profiles of successful greenhouse projects on all scales, this inspirational manual will considerably change the conversation about greenhouse design.
