Now, in Kiss the Ground, he explains an incredible truth: by changing our diets to a soil-nourishing, regenerative agriculture diet, we can reverse global warming, harvest healthy, abundant food, and eliminate the poisonous substances that are harming our children, pets, bodies, and ultimately our planet. Through fascinating and accessible interviews with celebrity chefs, ranchers, farmers, and top scientists, this remarkable book, soon to be a full-length documentary film narrated by Woody Harrelson, will teach you how to become an agent in humanity’s single most important and time sensitive mission. Reverse climate change and effectively save the world—all through the choices you make in how and what to eat.

    Most people don't want to think about what happens when the oil runs out (or becomes prohibitively expensive). This title shows how the inevitable and profound changes ahead can have a positive effect.

    How we farm, what we eat, and how our food gets to the table all have an impact. And our government and the food industry are willfully ignoring the issue rather than addressing it.In Anna Lappé's controversial new book, she predicts that unless we radically shift the trends of what food we're eating and how we're producing it, food system-related greenhouse gas emissions will go up and up and up. She exposes the interests that will resist the change, and the spin food companies will generate to avoid system-wide reform. And she offers a vision of a future in which our food system does more good than harm, with six principles for a climate friendly diet as well as visits to farmers who are demonstrating the potential of sustainable farming.In this measured and intelligent call to action, Lappé helps readers understand that food can be a powerful starting point for solutions to global environmental problems.

    In many cases, though, the same sound business practices apply whether you are producing cars or carrots. Author Ben Hartman and other young farmers are increasingly finding that incorporating the best new ideas from business into their farming can drastically cut their wastes and increase their profits, making their farms more environmentally and economically sustainable. 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 on progressive farms around the world. Using examples from his own family’s one-acre community-supported farm in Indiana, Hartman clearly instructs other small farmers in how to incorporate lean practices in each step of their production chain, from starting a farm and harvesting crops to training employees and selling goods. While the intended audience for this book is small-scale farmers who are part of the growing local food movement, Hartman’s prescriptions for high-value, low-cost production apply to farms and businesses of almost any size or scale that hope to harness the power of lean in their production processes.

    It is based on course worksheets which have been designed, refined and tested on students over time. Linking theory to practice, he places the ethics, principles, philosophies, tools and techniques directly into the context of the process itself. While written for anyone with a basic grasp of permaculture, this book also has plenty to offer the more experienced designer.This guide covers: Systems and patterns Working as part of a design team Land and non-land based design Design frameworks Site surveying and map making Interviewing clients Working with large client groups Identifying functions Choosing systems and elements Placement and integration Creating a design proposal Project management Presenting your ideas to clients and much more.A great reference for anyone who has done, or is thinking of doing, any kind of permaculture course.

    . . with poetic flair and a sense of humor" (Library Journal). Line drawings.

    What drives them is their deep love of the land: the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth, to ensure that their families and communities will continue to thrive.Unfolding as a journey down the Mississippi River, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman tells the stories of five representatives of this stewardship movement: a Montana rancher, a Kansas farmer, a Mississippi riverman, a Louisiana shrimper, and a Gulf fisherman. In exploring their work and family histories and the essential geographies they protect, Rancher, Farmer, Fisherman challenges pervasive and powerful myths about American and environmental values.

    The Quarter-Acre Farm is Warren's account of deciding, despite all resistance, to take control of her family's food choices, get her hands dirty, and create a garden in her suburban yard. It's a story of bugs, worms, rot, and failure; of learning, replanting, harvesting, and eating. The road is long and riddled with mistakes, but by the end of her yearlong experiment, Warren's sons and husband have become her biggest fans, in fact, they're even eager to help harvest (and eat) the beautiful bounty she brings in.Full of tips and recipes to help anyone interested in growing and preparing at least a small part of their diet at home, The Quarter-Acre Farm is a warm, witty tale about family, food, and the incredible gratification that accompanies self-sufficiency.

    In this remarkable anthology are fifteen essays from Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Brian Donahue, Eric Freyfogle, David Orr, and others. The Essential Agrarian Reader calls us to celebrate the gifts of the earth, through honest work and respect for the land.

    For 290,000 years, we managed to meet that need as hunter-gatherers, a state in which Manning believes we were at our most human: at our smartest, strongest, most sensually alive. But our reliance on food made a secure supply deeply attractive, and eventually we embarked upon the agricultural experiment that has been the history of our past 10,000 years.The evolutionary road is littered with failed experiments, however, and Manning suggests that agriculture as we have practiced it runs against both our grain and nature's. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, biologists, archaeologists, and philosophers, along with his own travels, he argues that not only our ecological ills-overpopulation, erosion, pollution-but our social and emotional malaise are rooted in the devil's bargain we made in our not-so-distant past. And he offers personal, achievable ways we might re-contour the path we have taken to resurrect what is most sustainable and sustaining in our own nature and the planet's.

    Today less than 2 percent of farms are controlled by black people--a loss of over 14 million acres and the result of discrimination and dispossession. While farm management is among the whitest of professions, farm labor is predominantly brown and exploited, and people of color disproportionately live in "food apartheid" neighborhoods and suffer from diet-related illness. The system is built on stolen land and stolen labor and needs a redesign. Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color. Farming While Black organizes and expands upon the curriculum of the BLFI to provide readers with a concise guide to all aspects of small-scale farming, from business planning to preserving the harvest. Throughout the chapters Penniman uplifts the wisdom of the African diasporic farmers and activists whose work informs the techniques described--from whole farm planning, soil fertility, seed selection, and agroecology, to using whole foods in culturally appropriate recipes, sharing stories of ancestors, and tools for healing from the trauma associated with slavery and economic exploitation on the land. Woven throughout the book is the story of Soul Fire Farm, a national leader in the food justice movement. The technical information is designed for farmers and gardeners with beginning to intermediate experience. For those with more experience, the book provides a fresh lens on practices that may have been taken for granted as ahistorical or strictly European. Black ancestors and contemporaries have always been leaders--and continue to lead--in the sustainable agriculture and food justice movements. It is time for all of us to listen.

    A desirefor sustainable, clean, wholesome food and superior soil quality has ledmore and more suburban and city dwellers to keep laying hens in theirbackyards and gardens.Learn how you can: Be close to your food source with a continuous supply of fresh, heart-healthy eggs to feed yourself and others. Take the best care of your chickens and find out where to buy them. Learn how to be a chicken whisperer. Improve your garden soil for super yields, superior flavor, andoptimal nutrition. Recycle food, grass clippings and yard waste, make compostand help reduce trash going to landfills, saving millions ofmunicipal taxpayer dollars. Help save millions of municipal tax payer dollars by divertingfood and yard waste from landfills; instead create compost -with the help of your flock. Raise baby chicks with items you already have. Avoid getting roosters and why you don't want them. Learn how to be a Poultry Primary Health Care Practitioner. Make and use effective and inexpensive treatments for your flockas described in the Poultry's Pharmacy.Learn how others: Have built urban chicken tractors, hen huts, condos and chickenchateaus to blend in with neighborhood landscape and architecture. Join in urban eco-agro-tourism with annual coop & gardenhome tours for fund raising. Start or join local poultry clubs. Keep small flocks to help preserve endangered breeds of chickens. Draft and pass local laws allowing laying hens withintheir town's limits.By the co-author of Chicken Tractor, Backyard Market Gardening and DayRange Poultry. City Chicks is a remarkable trend-setting book for poultrylovers and urban agriculturists.The imaginative and entertaining style of writing is combined withhands-on, real-life experience to bring you one of the most complete andauthorative books on micro-flock management.

    Barbara Pleasant and Deborah Martin explain their six-way compost gardening system in this informative guide that will have you rethinking how you create and use your compost. With your plants and compost living together from the beginning, your garden will become a nourishing and organic environment that encourages growth and sustainability. You’ll also find that the enriched soil requires less tending, weeding, and mulching, so you can do less back-breaking work for the same lush, beautiful results.

    It is now being delivered into the new millennium kicking and screaming! Since he first wrote it the book has certainly got about. He has travelled in at least dozens of countries since he wrote it (to say nothing of four continents) and in every one of them people have come up to him with their copy for him to sign. He has delighted to find wine stains on the wine-making pages, and good honest dirt on the gardening pages. He has indeed updated it for the new millennium, but has not sacrificed any of the techniques and tips that have stood him well all that time and continue to do so.Since he first wrote the first version of this book back in 1975 he thinks there is a far more urgent reason for it. Very few people today can fail to see that the present course that man- and woman-kind is embarked upon is unsustainable. ... It is now urgently necessary to dismantle the whole fabric of world trade and replace it with a far less fuel-hungry, less polluting, less dangerous arrangement.Most people know all this, but they are afraid that their quality of life will decline if we change course. The purpose of this book is to show that this is not the case.

    About 75 percent of all flowering plants rely on pollinators in order to set seed or fruit, and from these plants comes one-third of the planet's food.Attracting Native Pollinators is a comprehensive guidebook for gardeners, small farmers, orchardists, beekeepers, naturalists, environmentalists, and public land managers on how to protect and encourage the activity of the native pollinators of North America. Written by staff of the Xerces Society, an international nonprofit organization that is leading the way in pollinator conservation, this book presents a thorough overview of the problem along with positive solutions for how to provide bountiful harvests on farms and gardens, maintain healthy plant communinities in wildlands, provide food for wildlife, and beautify the landscape with flowers.Full-color photographs introduce readers to more than 80 species of native pollinators -- including bees, flies, butterflies, wasps, and moths -- noting each one's range and habits. The heart of the book provides detailed garden plans and techniques showing how to create flowering habitat to attract a variety of these pollinators, help expand the pollinator population, and provide pollinators with inviting nesting sites. Readers will also find useful instructions for creating nesting structures, educational activities for involving children, and an extensive list of resources. Attracting Native Pollinators is an essential reference book and action guide for anyone who is involved in growing food or is concerned about the future of our food supply.