Results by title

240 books match the query 'Agriculture & Food' and 6 start with w

Sort by

We Are Not Starving

The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Ghana

Joeva Sean Rock

Michigan State University Press, 2022

This critical text is a timely ethnography of how global powers, local resistance, and capital flows are shaping contemporary African foodways. Ghana was one of the first countries targeted by a group of US donors and agribusiness corporations that funded an ambitious plan to develop genetically modified (GM) crops for African farmers. The collective believed that GM crops would help farmers increase their yields and help spark a “new” Green Revolution on the continent. Soon after the project began in Ghana, a nationwide food sovereignty movement emerged in opposition to GM crops. Today, in spite of impressive efforts and investments by proponents, only two GM crops remain in the pipeline. Why, after years of preparation, millions of dollars of funding, and multiple policy reforms, did these megaprojects effectively come to a halt? One of the first ethnographies to take on the question of GM crops in the African context, We Are Not Starving: The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Ghana blends archival analysis, interviews, and participant observation with Ghanaian scientists, farmers, activists, and officials. Ultimately the text aims to illuminate why GM crops have animated the country and to highlight how their introduction has opened an opportunity to air grievances about the systematic de-valuing and exploitation of African land, labor, and knowledge that have been centuries in the making.

[more]

White Burgers, Black Cash

Fast Food from Black Exclusion to Exploitation

Naa Oyo A. Kwate

University of Minnesota Press, 2023

The long and pernicious relationship between fast food restaurants and the African American community

James Beard Foundation: James Beard Media Award for Reference, History, and Scholarship — Winner
Urban Affairs Association Best Book in Urban Affairs — Winner
Association for Humanist Sociology Betty and McClung Lee Book Award — Winner
Black Caucus of the American Library Association — Honor, Nonfiction category
Museum of African American History Stone Book Award — Shortlist
Business History Conference: Hagley Prize — Finalist
Association for the Study of Food and Society: ASFS Book Award — Winner
Society for the Study of Social Problems: Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award — Winner
Foreword: INDIES — Silver winner, History category

Today, fast food is disproportionately located in Black neighborhoods and marketed to Black Americans through trgeted advertising. But throughout much of the twentieth century, fast food was developed specifically for White urban and suburban customers, purposefully avoiding Black spaces. In White Burgers, Black Cash, Naa Oyo A. Kwate traces the evolution in fast food from the early 1900s to the present, from its long history of racist exclusion to its current damaging embrace of urban Black communities.

Fast food has historically been tied to the country’s self-image as the land of opportunity and is marketed as one of life’s simple pleasures, but a more insidious history lies at the industry’s core. White Burgers, Black Cash investigates the complex trajectory of restaurant locations from a decided commitment to Whiteness to the disproportionate densities that characterize Black communities today. Kwate expansively charts fast food’s racial and spatial transformation and centers the cities of Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C., in a national examination of the biggest brands of today, including White Castle, KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s, and more.

Deeply researched, compellingly told, and brimming with surprising details, White Burgers, Black Cash reveals the inequalities embedded in America’s popular national food tradition.

[more]

Wildly Successful Farming

Sustainability and the New Agricultural Land Ethic

Brian DeVore

University of Wisconsin Press, 2020

Wildly Successful Farming tells the stories of farmers across the American Midwest who are balancing profitability and food production with environmental sustainability and a passion for all things wild. They are using innovative techniques and strategies to develop their "wildly" successful farms as working ecosystems. Whether producing grain, vegetables, fruit, meat, or milk, these next-generation agrarians look beyond the bottom line of the spreadsheet to the biological activity on the land as key measures of success.

Written by agricultural journalist Brian DeVore, the book is based on interviews he has conducted at farms, wildlife refuges, laboratories, test plots, and gardens over the past twenty-five years. He documents innovations in cover cropping, managed rotational grazing, perennial polyculture, and integrated pest management. His accounts provide insight into the impacts regenerative farming methods can have on wildlife, water, landscape, soils, and rural communities and suggest ways all of us can support wildly successful farmers.

[more]

Wine By Design

Santa Barbara's Quest for Terroir

Victor W. Geraci

University of Nevada Press, 2020

From its eighteenth-century beginnings, the Santa Barbara wine industry achieved success by embracing a “wine by design” model. In this process farmers, winemakers, and entrepreneurs overcome roadblocks like diseases, government policies and regulations, and environmental concerns by utilizing the latest technological advances coupled with agribusiness capitalism.

As the American demand for premium wine grapes intensified in the late twentieth century, the Northern California wine industry rapidly grew its boutique and innovative local designer winemaking to increase profit to meet demand and compete on a global scale. Set in the context of the regional, national, and global wine community, this story illuminates a regional story of how the Santa Barbara wine industry found solutions to current market conditions while utilizing local traditions to develop a new version of local wine terroir. An accomplishment that allowed them to compete in the global marketplace yet develop highly specialized wine that is unique to the region.

By employing leading-edge technology and entrepreneurship, the California Central Coast region of Santa Barbara became a model for the American vision of agricultural innovation and an integral part of the international wine trade, developing a personalized version of local wine terroir.

[more]

Wisconsin Agriculture

A History

Jerry Apps

Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2015

"I'm embarrassed to say I thought I knew anything substantial about Wisconsin agriculture or its history before I read this book. 'Wisconsin Agriculture' should be required reading in history classes from high school to the collegiate level. It makes me thankful that Jerry Apps has such a sense of commitment to Wisconsin's agricultural heritage--and to getting the story right." --Pam Jahnke, Farm Director, Wisconsin Farm Report Radio

Wisconsin has been a farming state from its very beginnings. And though it's long been known as "the Dairy State," it produces much more than cows, milk, and cheese. In fact, Wisconsin is one of the most diverse agricultural states in the nation.

The story of farming in Wisconsin is rich and diverse as well, and the threads of that story are related and intertwined. In this long-awaited volume, celebrated rural historian Jerry Apps examines everything from the fundamental influences of landscape and weather to complex matters of ethnic and pioneer settlement patterns, changing technology, agricultural research and education, and government regulations and policies. Along with expected topics, such as the cranberry industry and artisan cheesemaking, "Wisconsin Agriculture" delves into beef cattle and dairy goats, fur farming and Christmas trees, maple syrup and honey, and other specialty crops, including ginseng, hemp, cherries, sugar beets, mint, sphagnum moss, flax, and hops. Apps also explores new and rediscovered farming endeavors, from aquaculture to urban farming to beekeeping, and discusses recent political developments, such as the 2014 Farm Bill and its ramifications. And he looks to the future of farming, contemplating questions of ethical growing practices, food safety, sustainability, and the potential effects of climate change.

Featuring first-person accounts from the settlement era to today, along with more than 200 captivating photographs, "Wisconsin Agriculture" breathes life into the facts and figures of 150 years of farming history and provides compelling insights into the state's agricultural past, present, and future.

[more]