Customer Reviews

Eco-Farm, An Acres U.S.A. Primer: The definitive guide to managing farm and ranch soil fertility, crops, fertilizers, weeds and insects while avoiding dangerous chemicals

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Even though the beginning of the book has a slightly arrogant writing style, it is the best book on sustainable agriculture I have ever read. It is filled with the science behind the claims that, although complex, is easy to understand. It will make converts of even the most chemically dependent gardener or farmer if they have an open mind going in. It truely is THE organic primer Bible

I left college full of scientific knowledge and spent thirty years amending that with experience. Though I cannot subscribe to Steiner's Bio-dynamics I do follow sustainable farming techniques - those thirty years have taught me something. In this primer, that has been distilled and laid out clearly and without preaching as many "eco" texts do.

An excellent essay on conservative farming, blending the agro-science with eco-science.

The author frequently goes off on tangents and rants that make deciphering the information difficult. Topics weave in and out of chapters and attacks on research done at Iowa State University further muddy the subjects. I get the feeling that the author is so passionate and knowlegeable about the subject that his typing could not keep up with his brain. Perhaps a stronger editor would have been able to keep the text better on track. One can gleam good information out, but at the same time, one is often left wondering 'why,' after reading many of the passages. This book might be a good springboard for further questions and research. It is not too scientific for the lay person to comprehend.

If you manage land, there are better sources on monitoring and building soil health with Cation Exchange Capacity (CEC) testing and treating. You don't even need a whole book on the subject.

Despite liking and working with the CEC view of soil, I abandoned this book when the tone of voice just got too irritating. It's a kind of "Gee, those scientist types don't know jack! Looky here, you can larn more than them in your own living room!"

The editorialising is smug, irrelevant and alienating. Seek out the information without the we're-so-smart stuff.

Without Albrecht there would be nothing to review. Goodonya Charles for publishing his works. probably made more money out of this than Albrecht did?

I agree with the previous reviewer - that Charles Walters is a bit condescending, but we allow this to genius in any other discipline. The book is billed as "the definitive guide to managing farm and ranch soil fertility etc..." But this book is not a technician's handbook about farming, it is a primer for a massive paradigm shift in the way we look at the entire eco-sphere, about our estrangement from the soil from which we derive our "permission for life" - and about a milieu of degenerative disease which necessarily flows from such a tragic estrangement.

Part of Walter's arrogance is really just conviction. It is the utter conviction of a Socrates or a Copernicus or an Einstein, who will brook no humility about truth. A sociopath does not a prophet make, but a true prophet will always be marginalized as one by the sociological institution from which he speaks. And this is because institutional science, "tries to harmonize the latest discoveries with the incongruities of its false position."

Paradigm shift is not fun. It is adventurous, but painful. No one looks for the painful adventure until the pain of institutional inertia becomes unbearable. Walters himself proposes a paradigm shift of such massive proportions that it quite exceeds his own modest proposals. Unless our agronomy exceeds the righteousness of the "environmental movement" we will never see symbiosis in our generation.

If only every person that ever eats food read this book as a set work at school, the level of intelligence across the literate world would double. No longer would advertising companies have such a gullible audience. No longer would the medical and medical insurance industry have such a ready customer base.
And most of all, the customer of the farmer/producer would not tolerate the practices in industrial agriculture, and in turn, small farmers would not be trying to ape their "big brothers"