Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 9780394499765
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 3652
Book Description
Chronicles the change in farming in the United States by key documents and legislation illustrative of the topic and period.
Agriculture in the United States: The second American agricultural revolution, 1941-1973 : Land use and tenure ; Federal farm policies ; World War II ; Education and experimentation ; Changes in farming and farm life ; The future of agriculture
Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 9780394499765
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 3652
Book Description
Chronicles the change in farming in the United States by key documents and legislation illustrative of the topic and period.
A Revolution Down on the Farm
Author: Paul K. ConkinPublisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 081313868X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240
Book Description
At a time when food is becoming increasingly scarce in many parts of the world and food prices are skyrocketing, no industry is more important than agriculture. Humans have been farming for thousands of years, and yet agriculture has undergone more fundamental changes in the past 80 years than in the previous several centuries. In 1900, 30 million American farmers tilled the soil or tended livestock; today there are fewer than 4.5 million farmers who feed a population four times larger than it was at the beginning of the century. Fifty years ago, the planet could not have sustained a population of 6.5 billion; now, commercial and industrial agriculture ensure that millions will not die from starvation. Farmers are able to feed an exponentially growing planet because the greatest industrial revolution in history has occurred in agriculture since 1929, with U.S. farmers leading the way. Productivity on American farms has increased tenfold, even as most small farmers and tenants have been forced to find other work. Today, only 300,000 farms produce approximately ninety percent of the total output, and overproduction, largely subsidized by government programs and policies, has become the hallmark of modern agriculture. A Revolution Down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929 charts the profound changes in farming that have occurred during author Paul K. Conkin's lifetime. His personal experiences growing up on a small Tennessee farm complement compelling statistical data as he explores America's vast agricultural transformation and considers its social, political, and economic consequences. He examines the history of American agriculture, showing how New Deal innovations evolved into convoluted commodity programs following World War II. Conkin assesses the skills, new technologies, and government policies that helped transform farming in America and suggests how new legislation might affect farming in decades to come. Although the increased production and mechanization of farming has been an economic success story for Americans, the costs are becoming increasingly apparent. Small farmers are put out of business when they cannot compete with giant, non-diversified corporate farms. Caged chickens and hogs in factory-like facilities or confined dairy cattle require massive amounts of chemicals and hormones ultimately ingested by consumers. Fertilizers, new organic chemicals, manure disposal, and genetically modified seeds have introduced environmental problems that are still being discovered. A Revolution Down on the Farm concludes with an evaluation of farming in the twenty-first century and a distinctive meditation on alternatives to our present large scale, mechanized, subsidized, and fossil fuel and chemically dependent system.
Agriculture in the United States
Author: Wayne David RasmussenPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 760
Book Description
Chronicles the change in farming in the United States by key documents and legislation illustrative of the topic and period.
Ninth Revolution, The: Transforming Food Systems For Good
Author: Sayed Nader Azam-aliPublisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9811236461
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401
Book Description
We are at a critical point in human history and that of the planet. In this book, a world leader in agricultural research, Professor Sayed Azam-Ali, proposes a radical transformation of our agrifood system. He argues that agriculture must be understood as part of global biodiversity and that food systems have cultural, nutritional, and social values beyond market price alone. He describes the perilous risks of relying on just four staple crops for most of our food and the consequences of our current agrifood model on human and planetary health.In plain language for the wider public, students, researchers, and policy makers, Azam-Ali envisions the agrifood system as a global public good in which its practitioners include a new and different generation of farmers, its production systems link novel and traditional technologies, and its activities encompass landscapes, urban spaces, and controlled environments. The book concludes with a call to action in which diversification of species, systems, knowledge, cultures, and products all contribute to The Ninth Revolution that will transform food systems for good.Related Link(s)
Food and Prosperity
Author: Amanda Carroll WaterhousePublisher:
ISBN: 9780979638947
Category : Philanthropists
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Book Description
The State of Food and Agriculture 2000
Author: Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
ISBN: 9789251044001
Category : Agricultural assistance
Languages : en
Pages : 362
Book Description
The State of Food and Agriculture 2000 reports on current developments and issues of importance for world agriculture, analysing global agricultural trends as well as the broader economic environments surrounding the agricultural sector in a comprehensive world review ... An important feature of this year's issue is the special chapter, World food and agriculture: lessons from the past 50 years, which gives an overview of developments that have taken place in world agriculture and food security over the past half-century ... -- from Back Cover.
The Rise and Fall of American Growth
Author: Robert J. GordonPublisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400888956
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 785
Book Description
How America's high standard of living came to be and why future growth is under threat In the century after the Civil War, an economic revolution improved the American standard of living in ways previously unimaginable. Electric lighting, indoor plumbing, motor vehicles, air travel, and television transformed households and workplaces. But has that era of unprecedented growth come to an end? Weaving together a vivid narrative, historical anecdotes, and economic analysis, The Rise and Fall of American Growth challenges the view that economic growth will continue unabated, and demonstrates that the life-altering scale of innovations between 1870 and 1970 cannot be repeated. Gordon contends that the nation's productivity growth will be further held back by the headwinds of rising inequality, stagnating education, an aging population, and the rising debt of college students and the federal government, and that we must find new solutions. A critical voice in the most pressing debates of our time, The Rise and Fall of American Growth is at once a tribute to a century of radical change and a harbinger of tougher times to come.
Plowman's Folly
Author: Edward H. FaulknerPublisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806148748
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 172
Book Description
Mr. Faulkner’s masterpiece is recognized as the most important challenge to agricultural orthodoxy that has been advanced in this century. Its new philosophy of the soil, based on proven principles and completely opposed to age-old concepts, has had a strong impact upon theories of cultivation around the world. It was on July 5, 1943, when Plowman’s Folly was first issued, that the author startled a lethargic public, long bemused by the apparently insoluble problem of soil depletion, by saying, simply, “The fact is that no one has ever advanced a scientific reason for plowing.” With the key sentence, he opened a new era.For generations, our reasoning about the management of the soil has rested upon the use of the moldboard plow. Mr. Faulkner proved rather conclusively that soil impoverishment, erosion, decreasing crop yields, and many of the adverse effects following droughts or periods of excessive rainfall could be traced directly to the practice of plowing natural fertilizers deep into the soil. Through his own test-plot and field-scale experiments, in which he prepared the soil with a disk harrow, in emulation of nature’s way on the forest floor and in the natural meadow, by incorporating green manures into its surface, he transformed ordinary, even inferior, soils into extremely productive, high-yield croplands.Time magazine called this concept “one of the most revolutionary ideas in agriculture history.” The volume is being made available again not only because farmers, ranchers, gardeners, and agriculturists demanded it, but also because it details the kind of “revolution” which will aid those searching for the fruits of the earth in the emerging nations.
The Resettlement Administration
Author: United States. Farm Security AdministrationPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Erosion
Languages : en
Pages : 44
Book Description
Author: