Books in Sustainable Agriculture

Beyond Labels A Doctor and a Farmer Conquer Food Confusion One Bite at a Time

<b>A nutritionist and a renowned organic farmer explore and explain the art of eating well.</b><br><br>Do you want to be healthy, happy and free? But find yourself stuck in your healing journey and want some guidance and encouragement? Perhaps you are overwhelmed by all of the conflicting diet advice. Maybe you don’t know where to start or who to trust. Or, maybe you just need a little motivation. <br><br>You’re not alone. We’re constantly bombarded with ever-changing diet recommendations and the latest diet crazes: Paleo, Keto, Whole 30, Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and the list goes on. Eggs are bad one day and good the next. Kale is good for you today. Tomorrow it contains high levels of thallium and is toxic to your thyroid gland. How do you know what to put on your plate that will bring you toward greater health and wellness?<br><br>In <i>Beyond Labels</i>, Joel Salatin, a farmer who is blazing the trail for regenerative farm practices, and Sina McCullough, a Ph.D. in Nutrition who actually understands unpronounceable carbon chains, bring you on a journey from generally unhealthy food and farming to an ultimately healing place. <br><br>Through compelling discussions leavened with a dose of humor, they share practical and easily doable tips about:<br>• What to eat<br>• How to find it and prepare it<br>• How to save money and time in the kitchen<br>• How to stay true to your principles in our modern culture<br><br>Whether you are just starting your health journey or you grow all of your own food, this book is designed to meet you where you are and motivate you to take the next step in your healing journey – ultimately bringing you closer to health, happiness, and freedom.<br><br>“The ideas, evidence and takeaways from this book have the power to reshape America's declining health. This is the most-fascinating, inspirational, and flat out most useful book I've ever read. Joel and Sina have done what no other authors have managed to do. They've created a survival guide for the war on our gut microbiome.”—<b>Andy Snyder, Founder of Manward Press</b>

Dirt to Soil One Family’s Journey into Regenerative Agriculture

<b>“A regenerative no-till pioneer.”—NBC News<br></b><br><b><i>“</i>We need to reintegrate livestock and crops on our farms and ranches, and Gabe Brown shows us how to do it well.”—Temple Grandin, author of <i>Animals in Translation</i></b><br><b><br>“<i>Dirt to Soil</i> is the [regenerative farming] movements’s holy text.”—<i>The Observer</i></b><br><br>Gabe Brown didn’t set out to change the world when he first started working alongside his father-in-law on the family farm in North Dakota. But as a series of weather-related crop disasters put Brown and his wife, Shelly, in desperate financial straits, they started making bold changes to their farm. Brown—in an effort to simply survive—began experimenting with new practices he’d learned about from reading and talking with innovative researchers and ranchers. As he and his family struggled to keep the farm viable, they found themselves on an amazing journey into a new type of farming: regenerative agriculture.<br><br>Brown dropped the use of most of the herbicides, insecticides, and synthetic fertilizers that are a standard part of conventional agriculture. He switched to no-till planting, started planting diverse cover crops mixes, and changed his grazing practices. In so doing Brown transformed a degraded farm ecosystem into one full of life—starting with the soil and working his way up, one plant and one animal at a time.<br><br>In <i>Dirt to Soil</i> Gabe Brown tells the story of that amazing journey and offers a wealth of innovative solutions to restoring the soil by laying out and explaining his “five principles of soil health,” which are:<br><br><br><br><ul><li>Limited Disturbance</li><li>Armor</li><li>Diversity</li><li>Living Roots</li><li>Integrated Animals</li></ul><br>The Brown’s Ranch model, developed over twenty years of experimentation and refinement, focuses on regenerating resources by continuously enhancing the living biology in the soil. Using regenerative agricultural principles, Brown’s Ranch has grown several inches of new topsoil in only twenty years! The 5,000-acre ranch profitably produces a wide variety of cash crops and cover crops as well as grass-finished beef and lamb, pastured laying hens, broilers, and pastured pork, all marketed directly to consumers.<br><br>The key is how we think, Brown says. In the industrial agricultural model, all thoughts are focused on killing things. But that mindset was also killing diversity, soil, and profit, Brown realized. Now he channels his creative thinking toward how he can get more <i>life</i> on the land—more plants, animals, and beneficial insects. “The greatest roadblock to solving a problem,” Brown says, “is the human mind.”<br><b><br>See Gabe Brown―author and farmer―in the award-winning documentaries <i>Kiss the Ground </i>and <i>Common Ground</i>!</b>

Homestead Tsunami Good for Country, Critters, and Kids

<b>From his 66-year farm, food, and family experience, Joel Salatin explains why thousands of Americans are selling their urban homes, cashing out retirement funds, and heading to the country. The exodus is both a goodbye to one life and an embrace of another.</b><br><br>When society breaks down, people head away from the city. For food security, health, and satisfaction, homesteads offer a haven of hope and help when much seems hopeless and helpless.<br><br>While fear motivates people to change, only faith sustains. This book offers multiple reasons for modern homestead living. Some are:<br>• Secure, stable, safe food.<br>• Healthy, happy children.<br>• Superior immune function.<br>• Community and connections.<br>• Meaningful work.<br>• Creation stewardship immersion.<br><br>In his 16th book, Salatin offers the homestead why to those contemplating the jump, those trying to dissuade their friends from jumping, and those who regret having jumped. Despite its sweat and disappointments, homesteading offers incalculable benefits that feed the soul, soil, and spirit.<br><br><i>Homestead Tsunami</i> digs deep into the ethos of today’s best pension plan: living and learning proximate to people who know how to build things, repair, things and grow things. A better life awaits.

Salad Bar Beef

In a day when beef is assailed by many environmental organizations and lauded by fast-food chains, a new paradigm to bring reason to this confusion is in order. With farmers leaving the land in droves and plows poised to "reclaim" set-aside acres, it is time to offer an alternative that is both land and farmer friendly.<br><br>Beyond that, the salad bar beef production model offers hope to rural communities, to struggling row-crop farmers, and to frustrated beef eaters who do not want to encourage desertification, air and water pollution, environmental degradation and inhumane animal treatment. Because this is a program weighted toward creativity, management, entrepreneurism and observation, it breathes fresh air into farm economics.

The Salatin Semester: A Complete Home Study Course in Polyface-Style Diversified Farming

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.

Tractor Coloring Book 20 Full Pages of Farm Vehicles.For Kids Ages 3-8.

<p>Make the perfect gift for anyone who loves coloring! Enjoy this Tractor coloring page for kids aged 3-8 who want to know more about the tractors working on the farm. Click on the cover to discover what's inside!<br> About this book:</p> <ul> <li>20 complete drawings with different tractor models.</li> <li>Printed on high quality solid white paper.</li> <li>Easily color with crayons, crayons or colored felt-tip pens.</li> <li>Beautiful designs suitable for all ages.</li> </ul> <p>Smile on your child's face! Scroll Up and BUY NOW!<br></p>

You Can Farm The Entrepreneur's Guide to Start & Succeed in a Farming Enterprise

Have you ever desired, deep within your soul, to make a comfortable full-time living from a farming enterprise? Too often people dare not even vocalize this desire because it seems absurd. It's like thinking the unthinkable.<br><br>After all, the farm population is dwindling. It takes too much capital to start. The pay is too low. The working conditions are dusty, smelly and noisy: not the place to raise a family. This is all true, and more, for most farmers.<br><br>But for farm entrepreneurs, the opportunities for a farm family business have never been greater. The aging farm population is creating cavernous niches begging to be filled by creative visionaries who will go in dynamic new directions. As the industrial agriculture complex crumbles and our culture clambers for clean food, the countryside beckons anew with profitable farming opportunities.<br><br>While this book can be helpful to all farmers, it targets the wannabes, the folks who actually entertain notions of living, loving and learning on a piece of land. Anyone <i>willing</i> to dance with such a dream should be able to assess its assets and liabilities; its fantasies and realities. "Is it really possible for me?" is the burning question this book addresses.

Your Successful Farm Business Production, Profit, Pleasure

Twenty years ago Joel Salatin wrote <i>You Can Farm</i>, which has launched thousands of farm entrepreneurs around the world. With another 20 years of experience under his belt, bringing him to the half-century mark as a full-time farmer, he decided to build on that foundation with a sequel, a graduate level curriculum.<br>Everyone who reads and enjoys that previous work will benefit from this additional information. In those 20 years, Polyface Farm progressed from a small family operation to a 20-person, 6,000-customer, 50-restaurant business, all without sales targets, government grants, or an off-farm nest egg.<br>As a germination tray for new farmers ready to take over the 50 percent of America's agricultural equity that will become available over the next two decades, Polyface Farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley stands as a beacon of hope in a food and farming system floundering in dysfunction: toxicity, pathogenicity, nutrient deficiency, bankruptcy, geezers, and erosion. Speaking into that fear and confusion, Salatin offers a pathway to success, with production, profit, and pleasure thrown in for good measure.