Green Fields Forever

Agriculture, the largest sector of the American economy, is of major importance to all citizens. "Conservation tillage" is a new style of agriculture that should affect both the ecology and economics of farming. It leaves the land relatively undisturbed; the plow is not used; soil dynamics is allowed to work; erosion is reduced. The author discusses pros and cons; he describes farmer scientists and farmer inventors. He depicts society, from the Bushman hunter-gatherers to the American victims of the "new agriculture depression." Finally, he observes that people are at a crossroads in affirming agriculture as a way of life: there is the possibility for ecological revitalization of the agriculture profession, the bases of society. ISBN 0-933280-35-1: $24.95.

Once patronized primarily by the counterculture and the health food establishment, the organic food industry today is a multi-billion-dollar business driven by ever-growing consumer demand for safe food and greater public awareness of ecological issues. Assumed by many to be a recent phenomenon, that industry owes much to agricultural innovations that go back to the Dust Bowl era. This book explores the roots and branches of alternative agricultural ideas in twentieth-century America, showing how ecological thought has challenged and changed agricultural theory, practice, and policy from the 1930s to the present. It introduces us to the people and institutions who forged alternatives to industrialized agriculture through a deep concern for the enduring fertility of the soil, a passionate commitment to human health, and a strong advocacy of economic justice for farmers. Randal Beeman and James Pritchard show that agricultural issues were central to the rise of the environmental movement in the United States. As family farms failed during the Depression, a new kind of agriculture was championed based on the holistic approach taught by the emerging science of ecology. Ecology influenced the "permanent agriculture" movement that advocated such radical concepts as long-term land use planning, comprehensive soil conservation, and organic farming. Then in the 1970s, "sustainable agriculture" combined many of these ideas with new concerns about misguided technology and an over-consumptive culture to preach a more sensible approach to farming. In chronicling the overlooked history of alternative agriculture, A Green and Permanent Land records the significant contributions of individuals like Rex Tugwell, Hugh Bennett, Louis Bromfield, Edward Faulkner, Russell and Kate Lord, Scott and Helen Nearing, Robert Rodale, Wes Jackson, and groups like Friends of the Land and the Practical Farmers of Iowa. And by demonstrating how agriculture also remains central to the public interest—especially in the face of climatic crises, genetically altered crops, and questionable uses of pesticides—this book puts these issues in historical perspective and offers readers considerable food for thought.

Do trees have legal rights? What risks to the environment should we legally try to control or prevent? In this updated edition of Green Justice, the authors further explore the interrelationship between the legal system and the environment, using key environmental law cases (over half of which are new selections) on such topics as population and biodiversity?and as recent as 1990. The authors' liberal arts approach leads to a wide spectrum of related topics: the history of the common law, the political science of administrative agencies, our obligation to future generations, and the ecology of species extinction.With the help of explanatory introductions, study questions, and references to relevant literature, students are challenged to determine for themselves how the cases should have been decided and how they link up to broader issues. This accessible text is ideal for undergraduate courses in environmental law and environmental policy as well as nonlaw graduate courses in planning or public administration.

Lois Phillips Hudson is recognized as a major chronicler of America's agricultural heartland during the grim years of the Great Depression. Reapers of the Dust, now reprinted for a new generation of readers, vividly evokes that difficult time. From Hudson's childhood in North Dakota spring these unusual, moving stories of simple, joyful days, of continuing battles with hostile elements, and of a family's new life as migrant workers on the West Coast. "Hudson writes with grace and beauty and an abiding understanding of the meaning of those bitter, tragic years."--Chicago Tribune "These tales are to 'discomfit civilization,' in the tradition of personal accounts of the settling of the West by such writers as Mari Sandoz, Wallace Stegner, and Walter Van Tilburg Clark."--The Nation

Great Possessions is David Kline's classic memoir celebrating his life as an Amish farmer in Southern Ohio. "Infectiously avid, the author shares his knowledge of mushrooming in spring, chopping firewood in fall, maple-sugaring in late winter, bird-watching all year round, and going on walks across the countryside with his children, ``just . . . seeing things.'' His reverence for nature and his deep religious faith are palpable, and he argues convincingly for the ``small-scale diversified farming'' of the Amish, which ultimately gives back to the earth more than it takes." - Publishers Weekly

This collection of essays represents an attempt to move beyond degradation and exploitation as the defining ecological narratives of the Great Plains by examining the region through the interrelated themes of water, grasses, animals, and energy.