Author : Eric Lionel Jones
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 19,77 MB
Release : 1974
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :
"A Halsted Press book." Includes bibliographical references.
Author : Thomas A. Lyson
Publisher : UPNE
Page : 162 pages
File Size : 30,50 MB
Release : 2012-05-22
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1611683033
A engaging analysis of food production in the United States emphasizing that sustainable agricultural development is important to community health.
Author : William Conlogue
Publisher : Univ of North Carolina Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 45,98 MB
Release : 2003-01-14
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 0807875058
In 1860 farmers accounted for 60 percent of the American workforce; in 1910, 30.5 percent; by 1994, there were too few to warrant a separate census category. The changes wrought by the decline of family farming and the rise of industrial agribusiness typically have been viewed through historical, economic, and political lenses. But as William Conlogue demonstrates, some of the most vital and incisive debates on the subject have occurred in a site that is perhaps less obvious--literature. Conlogue refutes the critical tendency to treat farm-centered texts as pastorals, arguing that such an approach overlooks the diverse ways these works explore human relationships to the land. His readings of works by Willa Cather, Ruth Comfort Mitchell, John Steinbeck, Luis Valdez, Ernest Gaines, Jane Smiley, Wendell Berry, and others reveal that, through agricultural narratives, authors have addressed such wide-ranging subjects as the impact of technology on people and land, changing gender roles, environmental destruction, and the exploitation of migrant workers. In short, Conlogue offers fresh perspectives on how writers confront issues whose site is the farm but whose impact reaches every corner of American society.
Author : David B. Danbom
Publisher : Wiley-Blackwell
Page : 216 pages
File Size : 42,72 MB
Release : 1979
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN :
Author : Helena Norberg-Hodge
Publisher : Zed Books
Page : 164 pages
File Size : 14,49 MB
Release : 2001-02
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9781856499941
Modern industrial agriculture is in crisis. The dream of global abundance promised by chemical and biological technology is becoming a nightmare of health risks, degraded land and ailing communities. There is mounting public distrust of conventional agricultural practices. From the Ground Up explores the fundamental principles which underlie the growth- at-any-cost thinking of modern society and highlights some of the most promising alternative ways of producing environmentally healthy food.
Author : Joseph Leslie Anderson
Publisher :
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 34,38 MB
Release : 2009
Category : History
ISBN :
From the late 1940s to the early 1970s, farmers in the Corn Belt transformed their region into a new, industrial powerhouse of large-scale production, mechanization, specialization, and efficiency. Many farm experts and implement manufacturers had urged farmers in this direction for decades, but it was the persistent labor shortage and cost-price squeeze following WWII that prompted farmers to pave the way to industrializing agriculture. Anderson examines the changes in Iowa, a representative state of the Corn Belt, in order to explore why farmers adopted particular technologies and how, over time, they integrated new tools and techniques. In addition to the impressive field machinery, grain storage facilities, and automated feeding systems were the less visible, but no less potent, chemical technologies--antibiotics and growth hormones administered to livestock, as well as insecticide, herbicide, and fertilizer applied to crops. Much of this new technology created unintended consequences: pesticides encouraged the proliferation of resistant strains of plants and insects while also polluting the environment and threatening wildlife, and the use of feed additives triggered concern about the health effects to consumers. In Industrializing the Corn Belt, J. L. Anderson explains that the cost of equipment and chemicals made unprecedented demands on farm capital, and in order to maximize production, farmers planted more acres with fewer but more profitable crops or specialized in raising large herds of a single livestock species. The industrialization of agriculture gave rural Americans a lifestyle resembling that of their urban and suburban counterparts. Yet the rural population continued to dwindle as farms required less human labor, and many small farmers, unable or unwilling to compete, chose to sell out. Based on farm records, cooperative extension reports, USDA publications, oral interviews, trade literature, and agricultural periodicals, Industrializing the Corn Belt offers a fresh look at an important period of revolutionary change in agriculture through the eyes of those who grew the crops, raised the livestock, implemented new technology, and ultimately made the decisions that transformed the nature of the family farm and the Midwestern landscape.
Author : Deborah Kay Fitzgerald
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 14,52 MB
Release : 2003
Category : Agricultural credit
ISBN : 9780300111286
Winner of the 2003 Saloutos Award for the best book on American agricultural history given by the Agricultural History Society During the early decades of the twentieth century, agricultural practice in America was transformed from a pre-industrial to an industrial activity. In this book Deborah Fitzgerald argues that farms became modernized in the 1920s because they adopted not only new machinery but also the financial, cultural, and ideological apparatus of industrialism. Fitzgerald examines how bankers and emerging professionals in engineering and economics pushed for systematic, businesslike farming. She discusses how factory practices served as a template for the creation across the country of industrial or corporate farms. She looks at how farming was affected by this revolution and concludes by following several agricultural enthusiasts to the Soviet Union, where the lessons of industrial farming were studied.
Author : Roderick Floud
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 607 pages
File Size : 24,13 MB
Release : 2014-10-09
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1107038464
A new edition of the leading textbook on the economic history of Britain since industrialization. Combining the expertise of more than thirty leading historians and economists, Volume 2 tracks the development of the British economy from late nineteenth-century global dominance to its early twenty-first century position as a mid-sized player in an integrated European economy. Each chapter provides a clear guide to the major controversies in the field and students are shown how to connect historical evidence with economic theory and how to apply quantitative methods. The chapters re-examine issues of Britain's relative economic growth and decline over the 'long' twentieth century, setting the British experience within an international context, and benchmark its performance against that of its European and global competitors. Suggestions for further reading are also provided in each chapter, to help students engage thoroughly with the topics being discussed.
Author : OECD
Publisher : OECD Publishing
Page : 87 pages
File Size : 27,29 MB
Release : 2012-03-05
Category :
ISBN : 926416765X
This study examines the broad range of factors driving farm management decisions that can improve the environment, including drawing on the experiences of OECD countries.
Author : Jane Gibson
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
Page : 442 pages
File Size : 19,81 MB
Release : 2019-07-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1496206738
Industrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation and debt; and rural community decline. Yet the future of industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on farmers’ decisions. In Defense of Farmers illuminates anew the critical role that farmers play in the future of agriculture and examines the social, economic, and environmental vulnerabilities of industrial agriculture, as well as its adaptations and evolution. Contextualizing the conversations about agriculture and rural societies within the disciplines of sociology, geography, economics, and anthropology, this volume addresses specific challenges farmers face in four countries: Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. By concentrating on countries with the most sophisticated production technologies capable of producing the largest quantities of grains, soybeans, and animal proteins in the world, this volume focuses attention on the farmers whose labors, decision-making, and risk-taking throw into relief the implications and limitations of our global industrial food system. The case studies here acknowledge the agency of farmers and offer ways forward in the direction of sustainable agriculture.
