Farm to Factory

Author: Robert C. Allen
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691144311
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
To say that history's greatest economic experiment--Soviet communism--was also its greatest economic failure is to say what many consider obvious. Here, in a startling reinterpretation, Robert Allen argues that the USSR was one of the most successful developing economies of the twentieth century. He reaches this provocative conclusion by recalculating national consumption and using economic, demographic, and computer simulation models to address the "what if" questions central to Soviet history. Moreover, by comparing Soviet performance not only with advanced but with less developed countries, he provides a meaningful context for its evaluation. Although the Russian economy began to develop in the late nineteenth century based on wheat exports, modern economic growth proved elusive. But growth was rapid from 1928 to the 1970s--due to successful Five Year Plans. Notwithstanding the horrors of Stalinism, the building of heavy industry accelerated growth during the 1930s and raised living standards, especially for the many peasants who moved to cities. A sudden drop in fertility due to the education of women and their employment outside the home also facilitated growth. While highlighting the previously underemphasized achievements of Soviet planning, Farm to Factory also shows, through methodical analysis set in fluid prose, that Stalin's worst excesses--such as the bloody collectivization of agriculture--did little to spur growth. Economic development stagnated after 1970, as vital resources were diverted to the military and as a Soviet leadership lacking in original thought pursued wasteful investments.

Every Farm a Factory

Author: Deborah Kay Fitzgerald
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780300111286
Category : Agricultural credit
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
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.

Farm to Factory

Author: Thomas Dublin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780231081566
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Book Description
Letters from young girls who left their homes to work in factories and mills examine their economic concerns, the work they were doing, and their friends and social lives

Animal Factory

Author: David Kirby
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 142995809X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 514

Book Description
Swine flu. Bird flu. Unusual concentrations of cancer and other diseases. Massive fish kills from flesh-eating parasites. Recalls of meats, vegetables, and fruits because of deadly E-coli bacterial contamination. Recent public health crises raise urgent questions about how our animal-derived food is raised and brought to market. In Animal Factory, bestselling investigative journalist David Kirby exposes the powerful business and political interests behind large-scale factory farms, and tracks the far-reaching fallout that contaminates our air, land, water, and food. In this thoroughly researched book, Kirby follows three families and communities whose lives are utterly changed by immense neighboring animal farms. These farms (known as "Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations," or CAFOs), confine thousands of pigs, dairy cattle, and poultry in small spaces, often under horrifying conditions, and generate enormous volumes of fecal and biological waste as well as other toxins. Weaving science, politics, law, big business, and everyday life, Kirby accompanies these families in their struggles against animal factories. A North Carolina fisherman takes on pig farms upstream to preserve his river, his family's life, and his home. A mother in a small Illinois town pushes back against an outsized dairy farm and its devastating impact. And a Washington State grandmother becomes an unlikely activist when her home is invaded by foul odors and her water supply is compromised by runoff from leaking lagoons of cattle waste. Animal Factory is an important book about our American food system gone terribly wrong---and the people who are fighting to restore sustainable farming practices and save our limited natural resources.

Plant Factory

Author: Toyoki Kozai
Publisher: Academic Press
ISBN: 0128166924
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 518

Book Description
Plant Factory: An Indoor Vertical Farming System for Efficient Quality Food Production, Second Edition presents a comprehensive look at the implementation of plant factory (PF) practices to yield food crops for both improved food security and environmental sustainability. Edited and authored by leading experts in PF and controlled environment agriculture (CEA), the book is divided into five sections, including an Overview and the Concept of Closed Plant Production Systems (CPPS), the Basics of Physics and Physiology – Environments and Their Effects, System Design, Construction, Cultivation and Management and Plant Factories in Operation. In addition to new coverage on the rapid advancement of LED technology and its application in indoor vertical farming, other revisions to the new edition include updated information on the status of business R&D and selected commercial PFALs (plant factory with artificial lighting). Additional updates include those focused on micro and mini-PFALs for improving the quality of life in urban areas, the physics and physiology of light, the impact of PFAL on the medicinal components of plants, and the system design, construction, cultivation and management issues related to transplant production within closed systems, photoautotrophic micro-propagation and education, training and intensive business forums on PFs. - Includes coverage of LED technology - Presents case-studies for real-world insights and application - Addresses PF from economics and planning, to operation and lifecycle assessment

Old MacDonald's Factory Farm

Author: C. David Coats
Publisher: Burns & Oates
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 196

Book Description
Breaking the myth of the traditional farm, the author brings public attention to the vast cruelties of factory farming where most animals are cared for in hi-tech environments.

Farm and Factory

Author: Daniel Nelson
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253328830
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 278

Book Description
Farm and Factory illuminates the importance of the Midwest in U.S. labor history. America's heartland - often overlooked in studies focusing on other regions, or particular cities or industries - has a distinctive labor history characterized by the sustained, simultaneous growth of both agriculture and industry. Since the transfer of labor from farm to factory did not occur in the Midwest until after World War II, industrialists recruited workers elsewhere, especially from Europe and the American South. The region's relatively underdeveloped service sector - shaped by the presumption that goods were more desirable than service - ultimately led to agonizing problems of adjustment as agriculture and industry evolved in the late twentieth century.

Farm Sanctuary

Author: Gene Baur
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 141656568X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 322

Book Description
Leading animal rights activist Gene Baur examines the real cost of the meat on our plates -- for both humans and animals alike -- in this provocative and thorough examination of the modern farm industry. Many people picture cows, sheep, pigs, and chickens as friendly creatures who live happily within the confines of a peaceful family farm, arriving as food for humans only at the end of their sun-drenched lives. That's what Gene Baur had been told -- but when he first visited a stockyard he realized that this rosy depiction couldn't be more inaccurate. Amid the stench, noise, and filth, his attention was drawn in particular to one sheep who had been cast aside for dead. But as Baur walked by, the sheep raised her head and looked right at him. She was still alive, and the one thing Baur knew for sure that day was that he had to get her to safety. Hilda, as she was later named, was nursed back to health and soon became the first resident of Farm Sanctuary -- an organization dedicated to the rescue, care, and protection of farm animals. The truth is that farm production does not depend on the family farmer with a small herd of animals but instead resembles a large, assembly-line factory. Animals raised for human consumption are confined for the entirety of their lives and often live without companionship, fresh air, or even adequate food and water.Viewed as production units rather than living beings with feelings, ten billion farm animals are exploited specifically for food in the United States every year. In Farm Sanctuary, Baur provides a thoughtprovoking investigation of the ethical questions involved in the production of beef, poultry, pork, milk,and eggs -- and what each of us can do to stop the mistreatment of farm animals and promote compassion. He details the triumphs and the disappointments of more than twenty years on the front lines of the animal protection movement. And he introduces sanctuary. us to some of the special creatures who live at Farm Sanctuary -- from Maya the cow to Marmalade the chicken -- all of whom escaped horrible circumstances to live happier, more peaceful lives. Farm Sanctuary shows how all of us have an opportunity and a responsibility to consume a kinder plate, making a better life for ourselves and animals as well. You will certainly never think of a hamburger or chicken breast the same way after reading this book.

Farmageddon

Author: Philip Lymbery
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 140884642X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 598

Book Description
The quiet revolution of mega-farming that is threatening our countryside, farms and food. 'This eye-opening book . . . deserves global recognition' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall 'Devastating . . . demands reading and deserves the widest possible audience' Joanna Lumley 'He is informed enough to be appalled, and moderate enough to persuade us to take responsibility for the system that feeds us' Guardian: Book of the Week Farm animals have been disappearing from our fields as the production of food has become a global industry. We no longer know for certain what is entering the food chain and what we are eating. We are reaching a tipping point as the farming revolution threatens our countryside, health and the quality of our food wherever we live in the world. From the antibiotics routinely given to industrially farmed animals to the chemicals that are killing our insect populations, Farmageddon is a fascinating and terrifying investigative journey behind the closed doors of a runaway industry across the world – from Europe to the USA, from China to Latin America. It is both a wake-up call to change our current food production and eating practices, and an attempt to find a way to a better farming future.

After the Factory

Author: James J. Connolly
Publisher: Comparative Urban Studies
ISBN: 9780739148242
Category : Cities and towns
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
After the Factory expores the challenges and opportunities facing the smaller industrial cities of America's heartland as they seek to reinvent themselves. It offers a unique, multidisciplinary look at communities often ignored by conventional urban studies and urban history scholarship.