Showing titles in Sustainable Agriculture

To grow produce of the highest nutritional quality the essential minerals lacking in our soil must be replaced, but this re-mineralization calls for far more attention to detail than the simple addition of composted manure or NPK fertilizers. The Intelligent Gardener demystifies the process, while simultaneously debunking much of the false and misleading information perpetuated by both the conventional and organic agricultural movements. In doing so, it conclusively establishes the link between healthy soil, healthy food, and healthy people.

Is it too late to regenerate the earth? Call of the Reed Warbler shows the way forward for the future of our food supply, our Australian landscape and our planet. This ground-breaking audiobook will change the way we think of, farm and grow food. Author and radical farmer Charles Massy explores transformative and regenerative agriculture and the vital connection between our soil and our health.

In Dirt to Soil, Gabe Brown tells the story of his ranch's amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to our most pressing and complex contemporary agricultural challenge - restoring the soil. The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over 20 years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil.

Fossil fuels and livestock grazing are often targeted as major culprits behind climate change and desertification. But Allan Savory, cofounder of the Savory Institute, begs to differ. The bigger problem, he warns, is our mismanagement of resources. Livestock grazing is not the problem; it's how we graze livestock. If we don't change the way we approach land management, irreparable harm from climate change could continue long after we replace fossil fuels.

We’ve been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, and save the planet. Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we’ve been led astray - not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance. e truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won’t save us. In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil - the basis of life itself....

Call it "Zen and the Art of Farming" or a "Little Green Book", Masanobu Fukuoka's manifesto about farming, eating, and the limits of human knowledge presents a radical challenge to the global systems we rely on for our food. At the same time, it is a spiritual memoir of a man whose innovative system of cultivating the earth reflects a deep faith in the wholeness and balance of the natural world. As Wendell Berry writes in his preface, the book "is valuable to us because it is at once practical and philosophical."

The restoration agriculture system described in this award-winning book works! It is possible for humans to produce staple foods using perennial agricultural ecosystems that actually improve the quality of the environment. This can be done on a backyard, farm, or ranch scale and is needed right now - on a global scale. Restoration Agriculture explains how we can have all of the benefits of natural, perennial ecosystems and create agricultural systems that imitate nature in form and function while still providing for our food, building, fuel, and many other needs.

Transform your space into a thriving, sustainable haven! Ready to create an eco-oasis but short on time, space, or resources? The Permaculture Roadmap for Busy Lives offers simple, jargon-free solutions to help you embrace sustainable living effortlessly, regardless of where you live.

Using his family farm and story as the foundation of his yarning, a young, entrepreneurial, farming Worimi man leaps into the discussion of agriculture on this land on which we live, its past, but more importantly, its future

Robert Pavlis, a gardener for over four decades, debunks common soil myths, explores the rhizosphere, and provides a personalized soil fertility improvement program in this three-part popular science guidebook. Soil Science for Gardeners is an accessible, science-based guide to understanding soil fertility and, in particular, the rhizosphere - the thin layer of liquid and soil surrounding plant roots, so vital to plant health.

Building Your Permaculture Property offers a revolutionary holistic method to overcome overwhelm in the complex process of resilient land design. It distills the authors' decades of experience as engineers, farmers, educators, and consultants into a five-step process complete with principles, practices, templates, and workflow tools.

You may think you don’t have the time or the money to start a big permaculture project. But permaculture doesn’t need to be overwhelming. You can start as small as you like, and you can move at a pace that suits you. Don’t feel you have to learn everything in one go and rush out to transform a whole wilderness in a year. Just deal in manageable chunks, and you’ll do just fine. Even if all you have done is tend to a few tomato plants on your window ledge, you can become an expert gardener; all it takes is a little time, patience, and practice.

Twenty years ago, Joel Salatin wrote You Can Farm, which has launched thousands of farm entrepreneurs around the world. With another 20 years of experience under his belt, bringing him to the half-century mark as a full-time farmer, he decided to build on that foundation with a sequel, a graduate-level curriculum. Everyone who reads (or listens to), and enjoys that previous work, will benefit from this additional information.

Framed by the author’s personal experience with backyard hens, Chickens: Their Natural and Unnatural Histories explores the history of the chicken from its descent from the dinosaurs to the space-age present. En route, Lembke surveys chickens in ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 19th century, and modern times, including the role of chickens in Jewish and Muslim practices. She also investigates the birds’ contributions to science and their jaunty appearances in literature.

Sarah Langford had left her country roots behind to live and work in the city as a barrister. But when she found herself moving to the countryside, back to an agricultural life she had left behind, she saw farmers dealing with very different problems to those faced by her grandfather. Beleaguered with the challenges of climate change, Brexit and falling incomes, they faced accusations of ecological mismanagement from a hostile media and public. But, as Sarah looked to them to teach her about the land, she also found a new generation of farmers on a path of regenerative change.

When Charles and Perrine Hervé-Gruyer set out to create their farm in an historic Normandy village, they had no idea just how much their lives would change. Neither one had ever farmed before. Charles had been circumnavigating the globe by sail, operating a floating school that taught students about ecology and indigenous cultures. Perrine had been an international lawyer in Japan. Each had returned to France to start a new life.

For decades, it has been nearly universal dogma among environmentalists and health advocates that cattle and beef are public enemy number one. But is the matter really so clear? Hardly, argues environmental lawyer turned rancher Nicolette Hahn Niman in her new book, Defending Beef. The public has long been led to believe that livestock, especially cattle, erode soils, pollute air and water, damage riparian areas, and decimate wildlife populations. In Defending Beef, Hahn Niman argues that cattle are not inherently bad for either the Earth or our own nutritional health.

In Cows Save the Planet, journalist Judith D. Schwartz looks at soil as a crucible for our many overlapping environmental, economic, and social crises. Schwartz reveals that for many of these problems - climate change, desertification, biodiversity loss, droughts, floods, wildfires, rural poverty, malnutrition, and obesity - there are positive, alternative scenarios to the degradation and devastation we face. In each case, our ability to turn these crises into opportunities depends on how we treat the soil. Drawing on the work of thinkers and doers, renegade scientists and institutional whistleblowers from around the world, Schwartz challenges much of the conventional thinking about global warming and other problems. For example, land can suffer from undergrazing as well as overgrazing, since certain landscapes, such as grasslands, require the disturbance from livestock to thrive.

More than a practical guide, Start Your Farm is a hopeful call to action for anyone who aspires to grow wholesome, environmentally sustainable food for a living. Take it from Forrest Pritchard and Ellen Polishuk: Making this dream a reality is not for the faint of heart, but it's well within reach - and there's no greater satisfaction under the sun.

In One Size Fits None, Anderson follows diverse farmers across the United States: A South Dakota bison rancher who provides an alternative to the industrial feedlot; an organic vegetable farmer in Florida who harvests microgreens; a New Mexico super-small farmer who revitalizes communities; and a North Dakota midsize farmer who combines livestock and grain farming to convert expensive farmland back to native prairie. The use of these nontraditional agricultural techniques show how varied operations can give back to the earth rather than degrade it.