Agriculture, one of the oldest human occupations, is practised all over the world, using techniques ranging from the profoundly traditional to the most scientifically advanced. Without it we would starve. Yet how many of us understand what is happening in the fields that we see as we drive through the countryside? How often do we think about the origins of the food in our trolley? In this Very Short Introduction Paul Brassley and Richard Soffe explain...

Food production systems touch nearly every aspect of life from farms and industrial processing plants to markets, grocery stores and the dinner table. Students will learn about the future sustainable food cycle'.

Don't believe everything you're told about food - most of it is highly misleading or completely untrue. Written by a farm and food advocate, this book identifies marketing half-truths and guides you through the aisles of the grocery store to simplify smart food shopping and restore your freedom to enjoy food.--AMAZON.

Throughout history, food has done more than simply provide sustenance. It has acted as a tool of social transformation, political organization, geopolitical competition, industrial development, military conflict, and economic expansion. An Edible History of Humanity is an account of how food has helped to shape societies around the world, from the emergence of farming in China by 7,500 BCE to today's use of sugar cane and corn to make ethanol.

Responding to a recent surge in interest, this is the first book to comprehensively address how Lean thinking and tools can be implemented in agriculture. This handbook breaks down barriers, clearly showing how techniques originally developed for use in factories work just as well on farms. Expert Lean farming consultants Susanne Pejstrup and Vibeke Fladkjaer Nielsen present these methods in a clear, easy-to-read style, accessible to farmers the world...

In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his fifty-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated...

Gain a holistic view of agricultural (re)insurance and capital market risk transfer Increasing agricultural production and food security remain key challenges for mankind. In order to meet global food demand, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that production has to increase by 50% by 2050 and requires large investments. Agricultural insurance and financial instruments have been an integral part to advancing productivity and are becoming...

From early Colonial times, the rural hilltowns of New England have been home to generations of dairy farmers. They earned their living through a remarkably varied combination of seasonal activities and incessant daily chores - maple sugaring, plowing, planting, cultivating, haying, logging, clearing fields, building stone walls, mending fences, harvesting crops, cutting, splitting and stacking firewood, breeding, doctoring, trading and slaughtering...

The Art of the Commonplace gathers twenty essays by Wendell Berry that offer an agrarian alternative to our dominant urban culture. Grouped around five themes-an agrarian critique of culture, agrarian fundamentals, agrarian economics, agrarian religion, and geobiography-these essays promote a clearly defined and compelling vision important to all people dissatisfied with the stress, anxiety, disease, and destructiveness of contemporary American culture....

This film follows a group of small farmers with big ideas who fight to start a cooperative to sell their grass-fed beef and are almost undone by a broken food system and their own naiveté. In New York State a farm is lost every 3 days and the Coop's 2-year struggle affords an intimate perspective on a national problem: is it possible for local food and small farms to compete with an industrialized food system. At stake for many are their farms, their...