Independent curation

Find farming history books you'll love

Weekly picks surfaced by readers who obsess over tractors, soil, and stories from the field.

Share your top 3 farm reads

Join fellow readers swapping must-read manuals, memoirs, and histories.

Start a list

Fresh off the shelf

Recently Added

Browse all books
Loaded 12 more books
The Field Guide to John Deere Tractors
The Field Guide to John Deere Tractors

When you're "out in the field" scouting for John Deere tractors, don't forget to take along this first-ever full-color pocket guidebook to these popular tractors! This convenient, easy-to-use guide puts a wealth of information right into your hands! You'll find brief histories, model runs, specification details, and eye-catching color photographs of more than 500 models of John Deere tractors, from the two-cylinder series of 1892 to the latest multi-cylinder models.

View Details
Pastured Poultry Profits
Pastured Poultry Profits

A couple working six months per year for 50 hours per week on 20 acres can net $25,000-$30,000 per year with an investment equivalent to the price of one new medium-sized tractor. Seldom has agriculture held out such a plum. In a day when main-line farm experts predict the continued demise of the family farm, the pastured poultry opportunity shines like a beacon in the night, guiding the way to a brighter future.

View Details
Wages in Practice and Theory: McCormick and International Harvester 1860-1960
Wages in Practice and Theory: McCormick and International Harvester 1860-1960

Apparent first edition hardcover

View Details
Snoopy and the Spy A Saga of Espionage, Ingenuity, and the Epic Battle to Save International Harvester
Snoopy and the Spy A Saga of Espionage, Ingenuity, and the Epic Battle to Save International Harvester

<p>On the farm fields of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the stakes had never been higher. The era marked one of the hardest economic environments of the twentieth century, and two of the world's toughest competitors were locked in a high-horsepower arms race to create the world's best piece of agricultural equipment. For John Deere, winning meant maintaining global dominance. For International Harvester, winning would mean survival. For all the other ag equipment makers--well, it was mostly bad news. </p><p>In a big money game of poker, the two top makers bet on various new technologies and raced to build the best one first. The new machines were designed and built in secret spaces, then tested in dark pastures and remote corners of the world. They were transported carefully covered under tarps and rail cars . . . all in effort to keep them from the prying eyes and nimble cameras of the competition. </p><p>In this rollicking trip back in time, the salesman, engineers, and executives who played the game offer firsthand accounts of how and why this techno-turf war was fought. As the game escalated, one salesman took matters into his own hands. In the name of company loyalty, he crossed a line he shouldn't have and found himself deep in enemy territory. </p><p>The book includes never-before-published images of facilities and equipment, engineering design details, a look at company culture at the ag equipment companies, quotes from interviews with engineers, salespeople, and leaders of both International Harvester and John Deere, as well as insight into the events that led International Harvester to fail. If you love agriculture, history, or a zesty read, this book is for you! </p>

View Details
John Deere
John Deere

<b>From the quaint little "Johnny Poppers" of the company's early years to the New Generation tractors to the highly sophisticated thousand series of today. <i>John Deere</i> covers these soldiers of the soil like you've never seen before.</b> <ul> <li>This hardcover book includes an eye-catching cover and beautiful photos and illustrations covering a vast array of John Deere products from tractors and combines, to industrial and recreational units.</li> <li>Classic and modern tractors and period ads join rare "action" images to chronicle the history of America's most famous and glorious workhorses.</li> <li>Technical, aesthetic, and cultural progressions of agricultural technology that influenced and were influenced by John Deere.</li> <li>144 pages.</li> </ul>

View Details
The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer
The Sheer Ecstasy of Being a Lunatic Farmer

Foodies and environmentally minded folks often struggle to understand and articulate the fundamental differences between the farming and food systems they endorse and those promoted by Monsanto and friends. With visceral stories and humor from Salatin's half-century as a "lunatic" farmer, Salatin contrasts the differences on many levels: practical, spiritual, social, economic, ecological, political, and nutritional.<br><br>In today's conventional food-production paradigm, any farm that is open-sourced, compost-fertilized, pasture-based, portably-infrastructured, solar-driven, multi-speciated, heavily peopled, and soil-building must be operated by a lunatic. Modern, normal, reasonable farmers erect "No Trespassing" signs, deplete soil, worship annuals, apply petroleum-based chemicals, produce only one commodity, erect Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, and discourage young people from farming.<br><br>Anyone looking for ammunition to defend a more localized, solar-driven, diversified food system will find an entire arsenal in these pages. With wit and humor honed during countless hours working on the farm he loves, and then interacting with conventional naysayers, Salatin brings the land to life, farming to sacredness, and food to ministry.<br><br>Divided into four main sections, the first deals with principles to nurture the earth, an idea mainline farming has never really endorsed. The second section describes food and fiber production, including the notion that most farmers don't care about nutrient density or taste because all they want is shipability and volume. The third section, titled "Respect for Life," presents an apologetic for food sacredness and farming as a healing ministry. Only lunatics would want less machinery and pathogenicity. Oh, the ecstasy of not using drugs or paying bankers. How sad. The final section deals with promoting community, including the notion that more farmers would be a good thing.

View Details
Farm Tractors Features Models from the World's Leading Manufacturers Including John Deere, IH, Ford, Case, Mercedes-Benz, Massey-Ferguson
Farm Tractors Features Models from the World's Leading Manufacturers Including John Deere, IH, Ford, Case, Mercedes-Benz, Massey-Ferguson

Complete with dazzling full-color photographs and illustrations.

View Details
Managing Price Risk in Agricultural Commodity Markets
Managing Price Risk in Agricultural Commodity Markets

Managing Price Risk in Ag Commodity Markets is the definitive guide to risk management in today?s volatile agricultural markets. As we move toward the end of the decade and prepare for the 21st century, American farmers face a most uncertain marketplace. Unprecedented changes in farm policy and New World trade agreements are two of the more important reasons why change is assured. It will take a different set of management skills to be profitable in the new marketplace. If it was ever enough to be just an excellent producer, that time is past. The big challenge facing farmers now and in the future is to respond to and manage the risk associated with highly volatile prices. We can help you prepare for that challenge. This book will help farmers like you develop the ability to cope in an uncertain marketplace. It looks at marketing skills and savvy, and develops management strategies that can be used to ensure and protect profitability. Managing Price Risk in Ag Commodity Markets starts with a look at some of the major forces that are changing the marketplace. Then it demonstrates what price risk is and deals with why it is important to you, to the agribusiness firms from whom you buy inputs mean, and to the processors to whom you sell your commodities. Two broad considerations are kept to the ?how? and ?why? of the changing world marketplace. They are responsible for the increased price volatility and risk to American farmers. The first consideration is the 1996 Farm Bill, which changed farm policy in a dramatic way. The second goes back several years and deals with two very important trade agreements: the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT). These two important trade accords expose the American farmer to any and all of the forces that can bring uncertainty to commodity supplies and price variability around the world. The marketplace has indeed changed!

View Details
Farmall Model M Photo Archive : Photographs from the McCormick-International Harvester Company Collection
Farmall Model M Photo Archive : Photographs from the McCormick-International Harvester Company Collection

Includes rare photographs of the Farmall 3F and the M prototype.'

View Details
Pioneer Plowmaker A Story About John Deere
Pioneer Plowmaker A Story About John Deere

Carolrhoda's best-selling Creative Minds Biographies series appeals to a wide range of readers. Written in story format, these biographies also include inviting black-and-white illustrations.

View Details
John Deere Color History's Box Set
John Deere Color History's Box Set

<p>A great value boxed set for the John Deere enthusiast! Here together for the first time are three classic John Deere volumes that are a must-have for any collector or enthusiast. Covers all the popular models, including 2-cylinder "Johnny Poppers," small tractors, and industrial tractors. Slipcased in a sturdy and attractive box for display on the collector's shelf or even in the barn with the green-and-gold machinery.</p>

View Details
Chemical Applications Management
Chemical Applications Management

This book describes many various kinds of pesticides, their toxicity, calibrations, and proper application. Also very practical management methods and application techniques, such as best planting times to avoid certain pests; how to measure ground speed to obtain the most cost-effective results from your applications, and how to interpret the different elements of chemical labels. Our book has over 850 pictures, charts, tables, graphs, and other illustrations to let you see exactly what we mean. This book is filled with EPA, OSHA, and other regulatory agency standards and suggested ways to meet or exceed those standards. Some topics covered in simple, straightforward language are soil nutrients and soil analysis; accurate identification of weeds, insects, and diseases and effective ways to control them. Also proper application techniques; using the new plant growth regulators and harvest aid chemicals; safe handling of toxic chemicals (an entire chapter is devoted to this topic); and much, much more.

View Details

Browse by interest

Explore Subjects

View all subjects