Farmbrarian

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Sustainable Food: How to Buy Right and Spend Less (2009) by Elise McDonough is one of a series of Chelsea Green Guides, which are designed “for individuals and businesses looking to green-up their knowledge.” This 67-page book is a quick reference on eating sustainably that will easily fit in a purse or jacket pocket.

The book offers concise explanations of food label buzz words like organic, genetically modified organisms (GMO), Fair Trade and free-range, among others. A focus is placed on helping consumers make eco and health friendly food choices without breaking the bank. For example, “Consider reducing your budget for meat and dairy…and put the money you save toward healthier organic fruits and veggies” (46). Wise advice indeed.

Sustainable Food is a useful resource for anyone but will be especially helpful to those with an interest in, but not much knowledge of eating ethically.

Chelsea Green Publishing kindly provided a review copy of this book.

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Every sentence of Novella Carpenter’s Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer (2009) is marinated in the perfect combination of humor, eloquence, grit and ghetto. Once you start reading, you won’t be able to stop.

The story chronicles the author’s successes and failures while farming an abandoned plot of land in a crime-ridden part of Oakland, California. She first tells of adventures raising turkeys, including a hilarious scene in which she chases an escaped bird down a main Oakland thoroughfare. The second portion of the book recounts Carpenter’s experiences raising rabbits on the deck of her second-story apartment. And the final section features two 4-H bred pigs that quickly become neighborhood menaces. Stories of colorful characters encountered along the way are juxtaposed between stories of the ever-growing garden.

Urban farming has been widely discussed as a potential solution to food security and a way to satisfy the growing desire for local food. Carpenter proves that urban farming can do this, and more. She feeds her flocks and pigs with dumpster waste from nearby restaurants; brings unlikely community members together in her squatter space; mingles with culinary stars; and shares her bounty with many.

Novella Carpenter shows us the way of micro-farming in this wonderful book that will leave you with the urge to find your own slab of deserted concrete and begin growing.

Publisher’s Weekly also wildly praised Farm City, calling the book “utterly enchanting.” Read the full review here.

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Richard Wiswall’s The Organic Farmer’s Business Handbook: A Complete Guide to Managing Finances, Crops and Staff – and Making a Profit (2009), is an excellent resource for any farmer. Given the recent trend of abandoning a day job to start a small farm, this book should certainly be a success.

The book aims to teach readers how to run a profitable farm, and the focus is distinctly financial. Wiswall successfully explains how to treat your farm as a business and then how to run it profitably, like any good entrepreneur would. “Farm for profit, not production,” (15) he implores. Wiswall provides a step-by-step approach to reaching a target income, including exactly what to grow and how much, along with where to sell.  Also addressed are the often scary topics of writing a business plan, managing staff, marketing, and other concerns. Very little information is given on farming and growing practices, which was an appropriate choice by the author, given the plethora of existing material on such topics.

A successful farm truly is much more than growing and selling food. Richard Wiswall has provided a great asset–especially for farmers looking to improve profitability or get up and running.

This book was kindly provided by Chelsea Green Publishing–thanks for the resource!

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Leslie Marmon Silko, a well-known Native American author, delivers rich prose and a captivating plot in Gardens in the Dunes (1999). The book is a rare work of fiction that fuses imaginary stories with historical and horticultural facts that will pique the interest of many.

Set at the turn of the 19^th century, Indigo and her older sister are the last members of a little-known tribe living in a desert garden oasis. The story follows the young girls as they struggle to survive persecution by American authorities.

Eventually ‘Indian police’ capture the pair and Indigo is sent to an Indian boarding school, while her sister is forced to move to a reservation. As the two displaced sisters try to reunite, the plot thickens. Silko includes a diverse character set and discusses a great number of historical issues, but the gardens in the dunes remain at the heart of the novel.

An intricate fictional storyline and reoccurring themes of botany, horticulture, and respect for the natural world will keep readers turning the pages. For a more thorough summary, see a brief synopsis in Time magazine or a longer review by the San Francisco Chronicle.

The great majority of our reviews will focus on nonfiction. But occasionally we all need a good fictional tale. Finding fiction that incorporates themes of agriculture, ecology, or other related subjects has proven difficult. If you have any suggestions, please share!

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Pamela Ronald and Raoul Adamchak are an unlikely husband and wife duo that joins forces to provide a unique discussion on the roles of organic farming and genetic engineering in present-day and future agriculture. Both work at the University of California, Davis: Adamchak as an organic farmer and Ronald as a plant geneticist doing research mostly on rice.

Ronald’s unique position makes her argument in favor of transgenic crops much easier to digest than one taken out of a Monsanto catalog. She shows why, in her opinion, genetically engineered crops and organic methods are not only compatible, but mutually dependent.

Set in the authors’ Sacramento Valley community, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food (2008) reads like a civil discussion among friends or respected colleagues. The focus of the debate is on the best way to properly sustain the earth, while feeding a growing population.

The book gave me better understanding of and some level of respect for transgenic crops. It is a useful contribution to the food movement that provides a surprisingly objective look at the use of genetic engineering in modern day agriculture.

Quotes:

• “What if…GE is a tool that can be refined and shared, as grapes can be fermented and made into wine that delights and nourishes those who drink it?”(68)
• “Herbicide-resistant soybean has helped foster use of low-till and no-till agriculture, which leaves the fertile topsoil intact and protects it from [erosion].” (70)

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In July 2005, artist Fritz Haeg arrived in Salina, Kansas to create an exhibition commissioned by the town’s art center. Haeg proceeded to replace the tough Bermuda grass of a selected Salina lawn with a completely edible landscape. Thus began the Edible Estates series.

Haeg warns in the preface that “this book is not intended as a how-to or technical resource for making your own Edible Estate” (11). A scrapbook is a better term.

The book (2008) begins with a series of essays condemning the front lawn, including excerpted text from Michael Pollan’s Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education.  Each essay presents a different perspective, but all of the authors agree that traditional lawns are a useless monoculture. The second portion profiles the Edible Estates Haeg designed throughout the United States and beyond. Reflections from the homeowners who volunteered their lawns are also included here. The next section of the book is comprised of testimonials from others who have transformed their front lawns independent of the Edible Estates project. A planting calendar for each climate zone, a selection of statistics, and a helpful bibliography conclude the book.

The hodge-podge theme is reinforced through the book’s style: matted black and white pages are followed by vibrant, glossy ones, which are proceeded by undyed, textured pages. Just as Haeg’s text combines varying styles and stories to create one-cohesive text, Edible Estates are created by fusing climates, communities, personal preferences, and other influences.

Collectively, lawns comprise more than 30 million acres in the United States (118); and just like lands used for conventional agriculture, most of this acreage is doused yearly with chemicals.  Although this book is far from comprehensive, it serves as an accessible introduction to alternative landscapes that are more productive and more environmentally friendly than the green that likely encircles your home now.

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Interest in raw milk has been growing steadily as of late, and along with it has come pressure from state and federal regulatory agencies on suppliers to stop providing the controversial food.  In The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, business journalist David Gumpert examines the legal bout over unpasteurized milk that has taken place over the last several years.

Concern begins with a small group of people getting sick and testing positive for the famous e.coli strain 0157:H7. Next, state officials deem that the occasionally life-threatening bacteria were contracted by drinking raw milk. (Gumpert shows just how inconclusive these findings can be, however.) Newspapers run headlines about raw milk nearly taking the life of someone’s child, and whether justified or not, the farmer is run out of business and a fear of the drink is established. The legal precedents being set in examples like this one are literally changing the rights of raw milk consumers and producers as you read this.

In addition to analyzing recent legal actions, the book presents anecdotal and scientific information on the health benefits and risks of consuming unpasteurized milk.  Many believe pasteurization destroys vitamins and enzymes (like lactase, the enzyme used to digest lactose), as well as various beneficial bacteria that are thought to play a role in strengthening our immune systems. Raw milk, like pasteurized milk, can however harbor dangerous bacteria if caution is not taken in production and distribution. Many outbreaks have been attributed to the consumption of raw milk throughout history. Gumpert makes it clear that he is pro-raw milk, but provides a very fair assessment of conflicting opinions.

Gumpert is also the author of the blog The Complete Patient, which began in 2006 and primarily discusses raw milk. The book frequently refers to the blog, including extensive quoting of both posts and comments. With the exception of some redundancies, the book is well presented and easy to understand.

A larger debate exists concerning food rights in general, and journalists like Gumpert are doing great work to illuminate the problems with our food system so that we can be free to produce and consume healthy foods. Overall, The Raw Milk Revolution is a great resource for anyone interested in raw milk.

A review copy of this book was kindly provided by Chelsea Green Publishing—thanks for sharing!

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Joel Salatin is the famed owner of Polyface Farms located in Virginia and widely featured in the sustainable agriculture movement.  Author Michael Pollan featured Polyface in his best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, which contrasted Salatin’s idyllic method of agriculture with more industrial, less earth-friendly agribusiness; and the documentaries Fresh and Food, Inc. also spotlight Polyface Farms.

In Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal (2007), as you might guess, Salatin spells out his frustration with the government (occasionally referred to as the “chicken police”) over issues such as raw milk, custom beef, salmonella, farmer’s markets, organic certification, taxes and plenty more.

Readers will discover the many legal challenges Salatin faces as a result of laws designed for large agribusinesses that catch his small farm in an all-encompassing net.  For example, large dairy operations are required, and happy, to pasteurize their milk for safety reasons.  The mandate is a result of over-crowded, mis-fed and antibiotic filled cows, which are incomparable to Polyface’s small, pasture-raised herd.  Even though his milk doesn’t need to be pasteurized for the sake of its consumers, his farm (and many others just like it) receive no exemption from the law.

The book raises awareness of the many barriers that impede sustainable farming efforts. Understanding the obstacles faced by our small farmers is critical to the survival of the sustainable agriculture movement.

Quotes:

• “The system thinks we’re a successful culture because we have more prisoners in America than farmers” (XV).
• “[Farming] is not just a business, it is a sacred calling…serving people who seek truth and are willing to travel dirt roads to get it” (59).
• “A democracy that worships money and power is no better than a socialist society that holds the same values” (230).
• “Unless and until government policy encourages a local food chain, America’s food chain will be increasingly vulnerable to bioterrorism” (266).
• “If you want to know what good food is, as a rule of thumb, whatever was available in 1900 is probably okay” (322).

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“First make sure that your husband is doing the kind of work he enjoys and is best fitted for and then cheerfully accept whatever it entails.” –Mother

And thus begins the hilarious tale of Betty MacDonald as she recounts her time on the rugged coast of the Pacific Northwest where her husband decides to build his chicken ranch.

The Egg and I was originally published in 1945 and soared to stardom shortly thereafter.   The memoir provides readers with an entertaining glimpse into the joys, hardships and harrowing adventures of rural living before modern conveniences like electricity and running water.

Vary rarely will you find a story about farming that is as witty, captivating and beautifully written as The Egg and I. However, the book will appeal more to a female audience.

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How can we feed 9.5 billion people by 2070?  Paul Roberts explores this multi-faceted dilemma in his book The End of Food (2009).

The development of the modern, international food system, contemporary farming methods and challenges, and a heavy dose of politics are a few of the topics covered.  Roberts offers a fair balance of viewpoints and presents information in a very digestible format.

Despite walking away with a better understanding of the problems, the players involved, and the steps that are being taken towards improvement, I feel that the book lacks focus and would benefit greatly from better cohesion.

The End of Food is not written to provide the solution, but rather to educate readers on the problem.  Roberts achieves this goal and has therefore provided a useful book in the endless battle to improve our ailing food system.

Read this book if:

• You want good background information on the formation of our current food economy.
• You are interested in food politics (US farm subsidies, the roles/actions of mega-corporations, global considerations, etc.).

Quotes:

• “I think a lot of people would enjoy being farmers, but somehow, as a society we’ve decided that farming is inappropriate” (250).
• “According to surveys by Delate, organic-corn yields in Iowa are now between 90 and 92 percent of conventional yields, while soybeans are at 94 percent” (251).
• “Consumers wishing to avoid transgenic foods cannot, because the industry has successfully blocked any requirement that transgenic crops be labeled – despite surveys showing that nine out of ten consumers want such labels” (256).