The One-Straw Revolution

Author: Masanobu Fukuoka
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1590173929
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Book Description
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. It is an inspiring, necessary book about agriculture because it is not just about agriculture.” Trained as a scientist, Fukuoka rejected both modern agribusiness and centuries of agricultural practice, deciding instead that the best forms of cultivation mirror nature’s own laws. Over the next three decades he perfected his so-called “do-nothing” technique: commonsense, sustainable practices that all but eliminate the use of pesticides, fertilizer, tillage, and perhaps most significantly, wasteful effort. Whether you’re a guerrilla gardener or a kitchen gardener, dedicated to slow food or simply looking to live a healthier life, you will find something here—you may even be moved to start a revolution of your own.

The Natural Way of Farming

Author: Masanobu Fukuoka
Publisher:
ISBN: 9788185987002
Category : Agriculture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
...A natural way of farming that renounces all human knowledge and intervention. - preface.

Sowing Seeds in the Desert

Author: Masanobu Fukuoka
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing
ISBN: 1603584188
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
Argues that the Earth's deteriorating condition is man-made and outlines a way for the process to be reversed by rehabilitating the deserts using natural farming.

The Soil and Health

Author: Albert Howard
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813132096
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Book Description
During his years as a scientist working for the British government in India, Sir Albert Howard conceived of and refined the principles of organic agriculture. Howard’s The Soil and Health became a seminal and inspirational text in the organic movement soon after its publication in 1945. The Soil and Health argues that industrial agriculture, emergent in Howard’s era and dominant today, disrupts the delicate balance of nature and irrevocably robs the soil of its fertility. Howard’s classic treatise links the burgeoning health crises facing crops, livestock, and humanity to this radical degradation of the Earth’s soil. His message—that we must respect and restore the health of the soil for the benefit of future generations—still resonates among those who are concerned about the effects of chemically enhanced agriculture.

The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution

Author: Andrew Mefferd
Publisher: New Society Publishers
ISBN: 1771422726
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 661

Book Description
Learn how to use natural no-till systems to increase profitability, efficiency, carbon sequestration, and soil health on your small farm. The Organic No-Till Farming Revolution is the comprehensive farmer-developed roadmap showing how no-till lowers barriers to starting a small farm, reduces greenhouse gas emissions, increases efficiency and profitability, and promotes soil health. Farming without tilling has long been a goal of agriculture, yet tilling remains one of the most dominant paradigms; almost everyone does it. But tilling kills beneficial soil life, burns up organic matter, and releases carbon dioxide. If the ground could instead be prepared for planting without tilling, time and energy could be saved, soil organic matter increased, carbon sequestered, and dependence on machinery reduced. This hands-on manual offers: Why roller-crimper no-till methods don't work for most small farms A decision-making framework for the four no-till methods: occultation, solarization, organic mulches grown in place, and applied to beds Ideas for starting a no-till farm or transitioning a working farm A list of tools, supplies, and sources. This is the only manual of its kind, specifically written for natural and small-scale farmers who wish to expand or explore chemical-free, regenerative farming methods.

Getting a Grip

Author: Frances Moore Lappe
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458716619
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
Designated by The New York Times Book Review as a must-read in 2008 for the next U.S. president, Lapps unique take and laser-like logic invite readers to try on a new, invigorating way of seeing the world. With her characteristic boldness, she takes on a set of disempowering ideas driving economic and ecological crises, challenging readers to rethink the meaning of power, democracy, and hope itself. In her punchy, no-holds-barred style, Lapp weaves together fresh insights, startling facts, and stirring vignettes of regular people pursuing ingenuous solutions. ""My books intent,"" Lapp writes, ""is to enable us to see what is happening all around us but is still invisible to most of us people in all walks of life penetrating the spiral of despair and reversing it with new ideas, innovation and courage."" This updated and revised edition responds to Obama's presidency and the global financial collapse, concluding with reflection questions that are perfect for book groups.

Restoration Agriculture

Author: Mark Shepard
Publisher: Acres U.S.A., Incorporated
ISBN: 9781601730350
Category : Agricultural ecology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Around the globe most people get their calories from "annual" agriculture - plants that grow fast for one season, produce lots of seeds, then die. Every single human society that has relied on annual crops for staple foods has collapsed. 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 - in your own backyard, farm or ranch. This book, based on real-world practices, presents an alternative to the agriculture system of eradication and offers exciting hope for our future.

Noah's Garden

Author: Sara Bonnett Stein
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780395709405
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 308

Book Description
Chronicle of the unmaking of a gardener with explorations into the ecology of backyard gardens.

In the Eye of the Wild

Author: Nastassja Martin
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681375869
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129

Book Description
After enduring a vicious bear attack in the Russian Far East's Kamchatka Peninsula, a French anthropologist undergoes a physical and spiritual transformation that forces her to confront the tenuous distinction between animal and human. In the Eye of the Wild begins with an account of the French anthropologist Nastassja Martin’s near fatal run-in with a Kamchatka bear in the mountains of Siberia. Martin’s professional interest is animism; she addresses philosophical questions about the relation of humankind to nature, and in her work she seeks to partake as fully as she can in the lives of the indigenous peoples she studies. Her violent encounter with the bear, however, brings her face-to-face with something entirely beyond her ken—the untamed, the nonhuman, the animal, the wild. In the course of that encounter something in the balance of her world shifts. A change takes place that she must somehow reckon with. Left severely mutilated, dazed with pain, Martin undergoes multiple operations in a provincial Russian hospital, while also being grilled by the secret police. Back in France, she finds herself back on the operating table, a source of new trauma. She realizes that the only thing for her to do is to return to Kamchatka. She must discover what it means to have become, as the Even people call it, medka, a person who is half human, half bear. In the Eye of the Wild is a fascinating, mind-altering book about terror, pain, endurance, and self-transformation, comparable in its intensity of perception and originality of style to J. A. Baker’s classic The Peregrine. Here Nastassja Martin takes us to the farthest limits of human being.

The Resilient Farm and Homestead

Author: Ben Falk
Publisher: Chelsea Green Publishing Company
ISBN: 1603584447
Category : Gardening
Languages : en
Pages : 323

Book Description
The Resilient Farm and Homestead is a manual for developing durable, beautiful, and highly functional human habitat systems fit to handle an age of rapid transition. Ben Falk is a land designer and site developer whose permaculture-research farm has drawn national attention. The site is a terraced paradise on a hillside in Vermont that would otherwise be overlooked by conventional farmers as unworthy farmland. Falk's wide array of fruit trees, rice paddies (relatively unheard of in the Northeast), ducks, nuts, and earth-inspired buildings is a hopeful image for the future of regenerative agriculture and modern homesteading. The book covers nearly every strategy Falk and his team have been testing at the Whole Systems Research Farm over the past decade, as well as experiments from other sites Falk has designed through his off-farm consulting business. The book includes detailed information on earthworks; gravity-fed water systems; species composition; the site-design process; site management; fuelwood hedge production and processing; human health and nutrient-dense production strategies; rapid topsoil formation and remineralization; agroforestry/silvopasture/grazing; ecosystem services, especially regarding flood mitigation; fertility management; human labor and social-systems aspects; tools/equipment/appropriate technology; and much more, complete with gorgeous photography and detailed design drawings. The Resilient Farm and Homestead is more than just a book of tricks and techniques for regenerative site development, but offers actual working results in living within complex farm-ecosystems based on research from the "great thinkers" in permaculture, and presents a viable home-scale model for an intentional food-producing ecosystem in cold climates, and beyond. Inspiring to would-be homesteaders everywhere, but especially for those who find themselves with "unlikely" farming land, Falk is an inspiration in what can be done by imitating natural systems, and making the most of what we have by re-imagining what's possible. A gorgeous case study for the homestead of the future.