Here at the Whole Earth Library at Thoreau Center, we are participating in this important event by highlighting a few of the many titles that the collection boasts on food-related issues and sustainable agriculture practices.
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Dr. Gary Paul Nabhan. Where Our Food Comes From: Retracing Nikolay Vavilov's Quest to End Famine. (2009)
Noted sustainable agriculture activist and ethno-botanist at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona Gary Paul Nabhan is the author or editor of 24 books on agricultural practices, bio-diversity and food culture. Published in 2009, Where Our Food Comes From retraces the journeys of famed Soviet botanist Nikolay Vavilov who as the director of the All-Union Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Leningrad beginning in 1924 amassed the world's largest collection of plant seeds. In this book, Gary Paul Nabhan, a winner of the prestigious MacArthur "genius" Award, weaves together Vavilov’s extraordinary story with his own expeditions to the planet's richest agricultural seed depositories imparting critical insight into the cultures that preserve and maintain humanity's rich agricultural heritage and food stocks. Nabhan shows how global climate change, free trade policies, genetic engineering, and the loss of traditional knowledge are threatening the global food supply. Through discussions with local farmers across five continents, visits to local outdoor markets, and a comparison of his own observations in eleven countries to those recorded in Vavilov’s journals and photos, Nabhan reveals just how much diversity has already been lost while offering a vision on how to better protect our global seed stocks and food supply.
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Dr. Jane Goodall. Harvest for Hope: A Guide to Mindful Eating. (2005)
In Harvest for Hope, world-renown primatologist and conservationist Jane Goodall tackles the dietary habits of the world's most successful, if sometimes tragicomic, primate. Surveying human food production and consumption, Dr. Goodall traces the changes such as the development of large-scale food production that seeks to maximize profit for shareholders with scant regard for long-term human health and safety that have occurred in her lifetime. Grounded in the belief that every individual does make a difference, hers is a clarion call for action and individual responsibility to restore long-standing sustainability practices, now seemingly sacrificed at the altar of corporate profitability.
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Dean Cycon. Javatrekker: Dispatches From the World of Fair Trade Coffee. (2007)
Coffee entrepreneur and fair trade advocate Dean Cycon examines globalization, immigration, women's and indigenous rights, environmental degradation and trade issues all by looking at our humble cup of coffee. As much a travel book to exotic coffee lands as it is a primer on the issue of fair trade, Cycon offers a hands-on account at the implications in the global production and trade of a commodity such as coffee, the world's second largest trade in terms of value and one that dates back hundreds of years. Cycon argues that "our understanding of justice, in trade and society in general, cannot be confined to a formula." Instead, fair trade must be more accurately seen as a process that improves the lives of the hundreds of thousand of small farmers who have been systematically marginalized by the forces of globalization.
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Andrew Kimbrell. The Fatal Harvest Reader. (2002)
Written by world renowned scientists, activists and thinkers, The Fatal Harvest Reader is a collection of over 30 thought-provoking essays on the problems inherent in large-scale industrialized corporate agriculture. Edited by Andrew Kimbrell, one of the country's leading environmental attorneys and the author of several books on the environment and food issues, the essays cover a range of topics from the myths of industrial agriculture and the false promises of biotechnology to the hidden costs, including its deep ecological impact and adverse effects on human health as well as offering a vision for more sustainable agriculture practices in the 21st century. The volume includes an essay, Machine Logic: Industrializing Nature and Agriculture, by Jerry Mander of the International Forum on Globalization that urges agricultural practices that express "a reciprocal relationship with nature." In another essay, Helena Norberg-Hodge argues that localized food systems are a cultural imperative that offer an alternative to boom-bust globalization. Other contributors include Alice Waters, Gary Nabhan, Jim Hightower and David Ehrenfeld.
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Darrin Nordahl. Public Produce, The New Urban Agriculture. (2009)
Author and urban design guru, Darrin Nordahl is at the forefront of the new urban agriculture movement. In Public Produce, Nordahl makes the case for local government involvement in shaping food policy. In what he calls “municipal agriculture,” Nordahl notes how elected officials, municipal planners, local policymakers, and public space designers are turning to the abundance of land under public control such parks, plazas, parking lots as well as the grounds around government offices and public buildings to grow food. He argues that innovative urban food concepts can vitality to city spaces as well as improve our health and environment. This timely book highlights some of the many public initiatives around the country that are helping to reshape the urban landscape while improving the American palate.
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