>Please suggest any good books you have read
>recently about the food system.
We review such books regularly in the Book Stall department of Farmer's
Market Online (marketfarm@aol.com). Here's a few we've reviewed and found of
value recently.
A Garden Of Unearthly Delights:
Bioengineering and the Future of Food
by Robin Mather
Dutton, 1995, $23.95 cloth.
As an advocate of sustainable agriculture, Mather approaches the issue of
bioengineered food products with a skeptical and often critical eye.
REFORMING AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY POLICY, by Brian D. Wright an Bruce L.
Gardner. 164 pp. AEI Press, 1995. $29.95 cloth.
As Congress pushes its "Freedom to Farm" act toward the President's desk,
this volume provides some timely reading. Published by the American
Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, it contains the results of
two studies on U.S. agricultural poicies that provide insight into the
politics of and options for the 1995 Farm Bill.
THE ORCHARD ALMANAC: A Seasonal Guide to Healthy Fruit Trees, by Steve Page
and Joe Smillie. 176 pp. AgAccess, 1995. $16.95 paper plus $4 shipping from
agAccess, P.O. Box 2008, Davis, CA 95617; fax (916)756-7188.
Growing sweet, unblemished and bug-free fruit is never easy; doing it with
little or no chemical inputs is downright difficult. As any backyard
orchardist is well aware, organic growers deserve whatever premiums they
seek.
FOOD AND WINE ONLINE:
A Guide to Culinary Online Services
by Gary Holleman.
Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995.
In a vocation as tangible and personal as cooking, it may be surprising to
discover how many professional chefs not only own computers, but are actively
cruising the Internet and various bulletin board systems. This book is
written for chefs and other food service people who are already online, or
who plan to go that direction soon; it is their cyberspace guidebook, no
matter how experienced.
SO SHALL YOU REAP:Farming and Crops in Human Affairs
Otto T. Solbrig and Dorothy J. Solbrig
Island Press, ISBN 1-55963-308-5
"Only in the last 200 years have agriculturists come to dominate the planet,"
note Harvard biologist Otto Solbrig and biology librarian Dorothy Solbrig. In
their co-authored history of farming, So Shall You Reap, they detail the
gradual emergence of agriculture and how it changed human history and the
world's environment.
THE CONTRARY FARMER
Gene Logsdon
Chelsea Green Publishing Co.,
$21.95 cloth, ISBN 0-930031-67-9
Much of Logsdon's writing, particularly in The Contrary Farmer, is meant to
inspire people to buy a small plot of land, till its soil, grow a crop
or two, and to invest themselves in the local community. He offers practical
advice on mulching, raising hogs, building ponds, cutting firewood
and other skills of rural life, but most importantly he provides a
philosophical framework for a fulfilling life outside of mainstream
consumerism.
AT NATURE'S PACE:Farming and the American Dream
Gene Logsdon
Pantheon Books, $23 cloth,
ISBN 0-0679-42741-4
The collection of essays in At Nature's Pace argue against single-crop
megafarms, which are moving toward an economic and biological crisis, in
favor of frugal and sustainable cottage farms. Logsdon envisions a return to
the kind of farming practiced before farmers became obsessed with expanding
their acreages, increasing their profits and living more like city folk.
These excerpts were borrowed from several issues of Farmer's Market Online,
which is available by e-mail free of charge on request to marketfarm@aol.com.
Michael Hofferber
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