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Garden Culture of the Twentieth Century
Leberecht Migge
Harvard University Press, 2013
Leberecht Migge (1881-1935) was one of the most innovative landscape architects of the early twentieth century. With work ranging from large urban parks to housing settlements with allotment gardens, he sought to create functional green spaces that would not only meet the environmental challenges of the industrial metropolis but also improve the social conditions of modern life. Migge's notion of "garden culture" captured the essence of the progressive reform movements of early twentieth-century Germany and yet was unique in proposing a comprehensive role for open space planning within this vision. The nationalistic rhetoric of Garden Culture of the Twentieth Century marks it as a political tract of the late Kaiserreich, and its deep influence within the Siedlung communities of the Weimar era attests to its lasting cultural impact. Perhaps the book's greatest significance today lies in Migge's emphasis on the socioeconomic benefits of urban agriculture, which prefigured both this important contemporary trend as well as other recent developments in green technology and infrastructure. Modern readers will find echoes of a progressivism that many have taken to be of only recent origin and will gain a better understanding of the social and economic history of pre-World War I Germany.
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Gardens of New Spain
How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America
By William W. Dunmire
University of Texas Press, 2004
When the Spanish began colonizing the Americas in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, they brought with them the plants and foods of their homeland—wheat, melons, grapes, vegetables, and every kind of Mediterranean fruit. Missionaries and colonists introduced these plants to the native peoples of Mexico and the American Southwest, where they became staple crops alongside the corn, beans, and squash that had traditionally sustained the original Americans. This intermingling of Old and New World plants and foods was one of the most significant fusions in the history of international cuisine and gave rise to many of the foods that we so enjoy today. Gardens of New Spain tells the fascinating story of the diffusion of plants, gardens, agriculture, and cuisine from late medieval Spain to the colonial frontier of Hispanic America. Beginning in the Old World, William Dunmire describes how Spain came to adopt plants and their foods from the Fertile Crescent, Asia, and Africa. Crossing the Atlantic, he first examines the agricultural scene of Pre-Columbian Mexico and the Southwest. Then he traces the spread of plants and foods introduced from the Mediterranean to Spain’s settlements in Mexico, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, and California. In lively prose, Dunmire tells stories of the settlers, missionaries, and natives who blended their growing and eating practices into regional plantways and cuisines that live on today in every corner of America.
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Gardens of Prehistory
The Archaeology of Settlement Agriculture in Greater Mesoamerica
Thomas W. Killion
University of Alabama Press, 1992

The prehistoric agricultural systems of the New World provided the foundations for a diverse set of complex social developments ranging from the puebloan societies of the American Southwest to the archaic state polities of Mesoamerica and the Andean region. From the tropical forests of Central America to the arid environments or northern New Mexico, Native American farmers made use of a distinctive set of cultigens and cropping systems that supported—with varying degrees of success—growing populations and expanding economies. Lacking most domesticated animals, so important to the mixed agricultural systems of the Old World, Precolumbian farmers developed intensive and resilient systems of agricultural production. These systems supported large societies of people who altered the landscapes they inhabited and generated a unique archaeological record of the evolution of farming in the New World.


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Genetic Improvement of Crops
Emergent Techniques
Irwin Rubenstein
University of Minnesota Press, 1980
Genetic Improvement of Crops was first published in 1980. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.Recent years have seen the emergence of a number of in vitro techniques that hold promise for the genetic alteration of higher organisms by non-traditional means. These new techniques may eventually modify the genetic structure of cash crop plants and, in practical terms, may lead to substantial improvement of crop production and to disease resistance in plants.This volume brings together 10 research reports by scientists actively engaged in developing genetic techniques in plants and other organisms. The first section explores both the potential for application of these techniques and the genetic needs of plant breeders. Other sections deal with genome organization and function; recombinant DNA technology and application; gene transfer; organelle transfer; and plant tissue culture.
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The Geoarchaeology of a Terraced Landscape
From Aztec Matlatzinco to Modern Calixtlahuaca
Aleksander Borejsza, Isabel Rodríguez López, Charles D. Frederick, and Michael E. Smith
University of Utah Press, 2021
The toil of several million peasant farmers in Aztec Mexico transformed lakebeds and mountainsides into a checkerboard of highly productive fields. This book charts the changing fortunes of one Aztec settlement and its terraced landscapes from the twelfth to the twenty-first century. It also follows the progress and missteps of a team of archaeologists as they pieced together this story.

Working at a settlement in the Toluca Valley of central Mexico, the authors used fieldwalking, excavation, soil and artifact analyses, maps, aerial photos, land deeds, and litigation records to reconstruct the changing landscape through time. Exploiting the methodologies and techniques of several disciplines, they bring context to eight centuries of the region’s agrarian history, exploring the effects of the Aztec and Spanish Empires, reform, and revolution on the physical shape of the Mexican countryside and the livelihoods of its people. Accessible to specialists and nonspecialists alike, this well-illustrated and well-organized volume provides a step-by-step guide that can be applied to the study of terraced landscapes anywhere in the world.
 
The four authors share an interest in terraced landscapes and have worked together and on their own on a variety of archaeological projects in Mesoamerica, the Mediterranean, Poland, and the United Kingdom.
 
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Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt
Ryan E. McConnell
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Papyrologists and historians have taken a lively interest in the Apion family (fifth through seventh centuries), who rose from local prominence in rural Middle Egypt to become one of the wealthiest and most powerful families in the Eastern Roman Empire. The focus of most scholarly debate has been whether the Apion estate—and estates like it—aimed for a marketable surplus or for self-sufficiency. Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt shifts the discussion to precisely how the Apions’ wealth was generated and what role their Egyptian estate played in that growth by engaging directly with broader questions of the relationship between public and private economic actors in Late Antiquity, rational management in ancient economies, the size of estates in Byzantine Egypt, and the role of rural estates in the Byzantine economy.
           
Ryan E. McConnell connects the family’s rise in wealth and status to its role in tax collection on behalf of the Byzantine state, rather than a reliance on productive surpluses. Close analysis of low- and high-level accounts from the Apion estate, as well as documentation from comparable Roman and Byzantine Egyptian estates, corroborate this conclusion. Additionally, McConnell offers a third way into the ongoing debate over whether the Apions’ relationship with the state was antagonistic or cooperative, concluding that the relationship was that of parties in a negotiation, with each side seeking to maximize its own benefit. The application of modern economic concepts—as well as comparisons to the economies of Athens, Rome, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Early Modern France—further illuminate the structure and function of the estate in Late Antique Egypt.

Getting Rich in Late Antique Egypt will be a valuable resource for philologists, archaeologists, papyrologists, and scholars of Late Antiquity. It will also interest scholars of agricultural, social, and economic history.


 
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The Global Farms Race
Land Grabs, Agricultural Investment, and the Scramble for Food Security
Michael Kugelman and Susan Levenstein
Island Press, 2013
As we struggle to feed a global population speeding toward 9 billion, we have entered a new phase of the food crisis. Wealthy countries that import much of their food, along with private investors, are racing to buy or lease huge swaths of farmland abroad. The Global Farms Race is the first book to examine this burgeoning trend in all its complexity, considering the implications for investors, host countries, and the world as a whole.
 
The debate over large-scale land acquisition is typically polarized, with critics lambasting it as a form of “neocolonialism,” and proponents lauding it as an elixir for the poor yields, inefficient technology, and unemployment plaguing global agriculture. The Global Farms Race instead offers diverse perspectives, featuring contributions from agricultural investment consultants, farmers’ organizations, international NGOs, and academics. The book addresses historical context, environmental impacts, and social effects, and covers all the major geographic areas of investment. 
 
Nearly 230 million hectares of farmland—an area equivalent to the size of Western Europe—have been sold or leased since 2001, with most of these transactions occurring since 2008. As the deals continue to increase, it is imperative for anyone concerned with food security to understand them and their consequences. The Global Farms Race is a critical resource to develop that understanding.
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Global Maya
Work and Ideology in Rural Guatemala
Liliana R. Goldín
University of Arizona Press, 2009
In the central highland Maya communities of Guatemala, the demands of the global economy have become a way of life. This book explores how rural peoples experience economic and cultural change as their country joins the global market, focusing on their thoughts about work and sustenance as a way of learning about Guatemala’s changing economy.

For more than a decade, Liliana Goldín observed in highland towns both the intensification of various forms of production and their growing links to wider markets. In this first book to compare economic ideology across a range of production systems, she examines how people make a living and how they think about their options, practices, and constraints. Drawing on interviews and surveys—even retellings of traditional narratives—she reveals how contemporary Maya respond to the increasingly globalized yet locally circumscribed conditions in which they work.

Goldín presents four case studies: cottage industries devoted to garment production, vegetable growing for internal and border markets reached through direct commerce, crops grown for export, and wage labor in garment assembly factories. By comparing generational and gendered differences among workers, she reveals not only complexities of change but also how these complexities arereflected in changing attitudes, understandings, and aspirations that characterize people’s economic ideology. Further, she shows that as rural people take on diverse economic activities, they also reinterpret their views on such matters as accumulation, cooperation, competition, division of labor, and community solidarity.

Global Maya explores global processes in local terms, revealing the interplay of traditional values, household economics, and the inescapable conditions of demographic growth, a shrinking land base, and a global economy always looking for cheap labor. It offers a wealth of new insights not only for Maya scholars but also for anyone concerned with the effects of globalization on the Third World.
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The Globalization of Wheat
A Critical History of the Green Revolution
Marci Baranski
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2022

Nominee, 2023 Wallace Award, Agricultural History Society
In The Globalization of Wheat, Marci R. Baranski explores Norman Borlaug’s complicated legacy as godfather of the Green Revolution. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his role in fighting global hunger, Borlaug, an American agricultural scientist and plant breeder who worked for the Rockefeller Foundation, left a legacy that divides opinions even today. His high-yielding dwarf wheat varieties, known as miracle seeds, effectively doubled and tripled crop yields across the globe, from Kenya to India and Argentina to Mexico due to their wide adaptation. But these modern seeds also required expensive chemical fertilizers and irrigation, both of which were only available to wealthier farmers. Baranski argues that Borlaug’s new technologies ultimately privileged wealthier farmers, despite assurances to politicians that these new crops would thrive in diverse geographies and benefit all farmers. As large-scale monocultures replaced traditional farming practices, these changes were codified into the Indian wheat research system, thus limiting attention to traditional practices and marginal environments. In the shadow of this legacy, and in the face of accelerating climate change, Baranski brings new light to Borlaug’s role in a controversial concept in agricultural science.

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Grain Storage
The Role of Fungi in Quality Loss
Clyde M. Christensen and Henry H. Kaufmann
University of Minnesota Press, 1969

Grain Storage was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

The deterioration or spoilage of stored grain is a problem of serious dimension, both from the standpoint of the financial balance sheet of those engaged in commercial grain enterprises and as a formidable factor in the worldwide fight against hunger. In this useful book the authors present practical information, in non-technical language, about the causes and methods of preventing the deterioration of stored grains and seeds.

The emphasis is on the role of fungi but material also is included on problems with insects, mites, and rodents in connection with grain storage. The fungi are of prime importance since not until recently have they been recognized as a major cause of loss of quality in grains and seeds. Even today many of those who deal with grains, from warehouses to management personnel, fail to realize that fungi may play a decisive role in their operations.

The book will be of special interest and value to grain merchants and processors, grain elevator managers and operators, grain inspectors, agronomists and agricultural economists concerned with crop production, and many others in agricultural or food processing fields.

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Grass Productivity
Andre Voisin; Introduction by Allan Savory
Island Press, 1988

Grass Productivity is a prodigiously documented textbook of scientific information concerning every aspect of management "where the cow and grass meet." Andre Voisin's "rational grazing" method maximizes productivity in both grass and cattle operations.

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Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through Cooperative Extension
Nia Imani Fields
Michigan State University Press, 2022
Grassroots Engagement and Social Justice through Cooperative Extension grows out of a commitment to the belief that Cooperative Extension professionals can and should be deeply engaged with the communities they work in to improve life—individually and collectively. Rooted in an understanding of the history and development of Extension, the authors focus on contemporary efforts to address systemic inequities. They offer an alternative to the “expert” model that would have Extension educators provide information detached from the difficult and sometimes contentious issues that shape community work. These essays highlight Extension’s role in and responsibility for culturally relevant community education that is rooted in democratic practices and social justice. The ultimate aim of this book is to offer a vision for the future of Extension as its practitioners continue to reach for cultural competence necessary to address issues of systemic injustice in the communities they serve and of which they are a part.
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Green Fields Forever
The Conservation Tillage Revolution In America
Charles E. Little
Island Press, 1987
Green Fields Forever changes the way Americans think about agriculture. It is the story of 'conservation tillage'--a new way to grow food for the first time that works with, rather than against, the soil. Farmers who are revolutionizing the course of American agriculture explain how conservation tillage works.
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The Ground at My Feet
Sustaining a Family and a Forest
Ann Stinson
Oregon State University Press, 2021
Ann Stinson grew up on her family’s tree farm in southwestern Washington state, on a ridge above the Cowlitz River. After building a life in New York and Portland, she returned home at the age of fifty, when her brother’s death from cancer left her manager and co-owner of three hundred acres planted in Douglas fir, western red cedar, and ponderosa pine.

The Ground at My Feet is a memoir about loss and grief as well as a portrait of a family, a region, and an industry. Combining personal story and research, Stinson weaves essays, poems, history, and science into a rich and layered account of life in a family forest in the Pacific Northwest. She maps interactions between the land and its people over two centuries: the Cowlitz peoples, homesteaders, and several generations of logging families who have worked the property. She follows her family’s logs as they become lumber for fence boards and suburban homes, touring a local cedar mill and traveling with her father to visit mills in Japan.

Stinson adds a landowner’s voice to conversations about the human tendency to demand more of the land than it can sustain. With its uniquely personal view of the Pacific Northwest’s timber and forestry heritage, The Ground at My Feet is an engaging addition to the literature of the landscape and ecology of the West.
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Grounded Vision
New Agrarianism and the Academy
William H. Major
University of Alabama Press, 2011
Issues of ecology—both as they appear in the works of nature writers and in the works of literary writers for whom place and the land are central issues—have long been of interest to literary critics and have given rise over the last two decades to the now-firmly established field of ecocriticism. At the same time, a new group of ecology advocates has emerged since the 1960s: contemporary agrarian writers such as Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, and Gene Logsdon draw their basic premises from the Nashville Agrarians of the 1920s and 1930s, and focus strictly on the actual intersections of land and people, striving to enact a healthy coexistence between the two. For agrarians, theory and academic philosophizing often seem inconsequential and even counterproductive.
 
In Grounded Vision, William Major puts contemporary agrarian thinking into a conciliatory and productive dialogue with academic criticism. He argues that the lack of participation in academic discussions means a loss to both agrarians and academics, since agrarian thought can enrich other ongoing discussions on topics such as ecocriticism, postmodernism, feminism, work studies, and politics—especially in light of the recent upsurge in grassroots cultural and environmental activities critical of modernity, such as the sustainable agriculture and slow food movements.
 
Major also focuses on agrarianism itself—the valuable relationship it advocates between workers and the land they work, the politics involved in maintaining healthy communities, and the impact of contemporary agrarian writers on the world today. Major thus shows contemporary agrarianism to be a successful instigator of the same social examination for which much academic criticism strives. Major illuminates the ways in which agrarianism’s wide scope and often-unyielding demands are founded in, and work toward, a deep respect and understanding of the connections between the health of the land and its peoples, communities, and economies, and he argues that it raises questions about work, leisure, consumerism, and science to such a degree that it leaves little doubt how fundamental agriculture is to culture.
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