Best of
Agriculture

1992

Becoming Native to This Place


Wes Jackson - 1992
    Exploding the tenets of industrial agriculture, Jackson, a respected advocate for sustainable practices and the founder of The Land Institute, seeks to integrate food production with nature in a way that sustains both.Foreword / Richard C. Edwards --1. The problem --2. Visions and assumptions --3. Science and nature --4. Nature as measure --5. Becoming native to our places --6. Developing the courage of our convictions

Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri's Little Dixie


R. Douglas Hurt - 1992
    In Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri's Little Dixie, Douglas Hurt provides the first systematic study of agriculture and rural life in one of the most vital sections of Missouri prior to the Civil War. This seven-county area along the Missouri River known as Little Dixie was the most important hemp-, tobacco-, and live-stock-producing region of the state, as well as a major slaveholding area. The people who settled Little Dixie had emigrated primarily from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. They brought southern culture with them and adapted it to their new environment economically, socially, and politically. Although the settlers began as subsistence farmers, unlimited opportunities and access by river to New Orleans and St. Louis made commercial farming possible almost immediately. Hurt provides the reader with a broad discussion of land acquisition, settlement, and town development in the region. He surveys the major agricultural endeavors of the southerners who settled there, considering technological change, agricultural organization, breed improvement, and transportation. Hurt also traces the development of rural life, emphasizing the importance of religion, education, and mercantile activities. Slavery permeated all aspects of society in Little Dixie. Hurt discusses the acquisition and sale of slaves, their management, and the political protection of slavery, and he relates the significance of slavery in Little Dixie to the Deep South. One of his most important findings concerns the extensive trade of slave children in Little Dixie. Farmers and planters, driven by the struggle for profit, supported both slavery and the Union. Consequently, political division in the state mirrored the national debate over slavery but also showed the uniqueness of Missouri, both ge

Basic Guide to Pesticides: Their Characteristics and Hazards


Shirley A. Briggs - 1992
    This volume provides physical properties of over 700 pesticides and transformation products and contaminents plus their toxic effects to mammals, other forms of life and the environment.