A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil [Paperback]

Sharon Astyk (Author), Aaron Newton (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0865716234 | ISBN-13: 978-0865716230 | Publication Date: May 1, 2009

“Astyk and Newton have written an important book with an unusual message: We need millions of new farmers…as soon as possible. You could not find two more reasonable, intelligent, sincere, and passionate people to talk to about food. And the book has very much the feeling of a conversation – with someone smart who cares about you. It is also intellectually complex, creative and nuanced. The authors are big thinkers and have taken a good lick at the central human issues of our time." Peter Bane

“This definitive guide can provide inspiration to gardeners and those concerned about the environment. It offers practical solutions to all the food-related problems brought on by industrialized agriculture and the globalization of food. Very carefully researched and well written, this documents what is wrong and what we can do about it.” Connie Krochmal - Bellaonline

 

 

"This outstanding and well-written compendium of insights and recommendations, of fervent idealism and practical solutions, is highly recommended."—Library Journal

Once we could fill our grocery carts with cheap and plentiful food, but not anymore. Cheap food has gone the way of cheap oil. Climate change is already reducing crop yields worldwide. The cost of flying in food from far away and shipping it across the country in refrigerated trucks is rapidly becoming unviable. Cars and cows increasingly devour grain harvests, sending prices skyrocketing. More Americans than ever before require food stamps and food pantries just to get by, and a worldwide food crisis is unfolding, overseas and in our kitchens.

We can keep hunger from stalking our families, but doing so will require a fundamental shift in our approach to field and table. A Nation of Farmers examines the limits and dangers of the globalized food system and shows how returning to the basics is our best hope. The book includes in-depth guidelines for:

• Creating resilient local food systems
• Growing, cooking, and eating sustainably and naturally
• Becoming part of the solution to the food crisis

The book argues that we need to make self-provisioning, once the most ordinary of human activities, central to our lives. The results will be better food, better health, better security, and freedom from corporations that don’t have our interests at heart.

This is critical reading for anyone who eats and cares about high-quality food.

Sharon Astyk farms in New York, and is the author of Depletion and Abundance.

Aaron Newton is a sustainable systems land planner in North Carolina, and is the founding editor of Groovy Green.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Astyk (Depletion and Abundance) and Newton, both farmers and activists, think it's a "Big Lie" to argue that Americans aren't ready for "real and deep and radical change in our way of living." Now, they insist, is the perfect time for a nation of producers fulfilling "real needs rather than abstracted wants." With links to global warming and coming energy shortages (they also subscribe to the Peak Oil theory), the food crisis they foresee demands a shift from industrial farming to sustainable agriculture, from a supermarket and fast-food mentality to a "locavore" approach, and from an American diet dominated by meat to one rich in whole grains, potatoes, legumes, roots and vegetables. They finger factory farming as a major source of ecological damage and global economic disparity, likening the industry to Soviet collectives. The authors' radical plan calls for 50 to 100 million Americans to become subsistence farmers working their own small plots, resulting in 200 million relying solely on organic food grown nearby, and huge savings in resources and health care. Naturally, this is a decidedly Utopian vision with long odds against it, but Astyk and Newton offer a solid, thought-provoking challenge to conventional wisdom about Americans' lifestyle and capacity for change.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From School Library Journal

Starred Review. Although most Americans are used to a seemingly endless supply of industrially grown and imported food, many fail to realize that this abundance is neither sustainable nor reliable. Industrial agriculture depletes the soil, poisons the environment, relies on petroleum-based fertilizers, and is controlled by a handful of large corporations. Small-scale farmer Astyk (Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front) and Newton, a sustainable systems land planner, argue that it is both possible and necessary to stop the harm caused by industrial agriculture. They show how the food crisis is tied to the energy crisis, global warming, and resource depletion and conclude that worldwide food shortages are imminent. What the authors propose is a victory farm and garden movement, one similar to the World War II undertaking in which Americans grew their own produce in home gardens. They discuss the many advantages of growing one's own food and of cooking nutritious, flavorful meals from scratch. Their book includes informative discussions of other pertinent works as well as interviews with authors like Richard Heinberg and Bill McKibben. This outstanding and well-written compendium of insights and recommendations, of fervent idealism and practical solutions, is highly recommended.—Ilse Heidmann, Washington State Lib., Olympia
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: New Society Publishers (May 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0865716234
• ISBN-13: 978-0865716230
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #295,663 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #83 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Agricultural Sciences > Sustainable Agriculture

More About the Author

Sharon Astyk is a former academic who is a writer, subsistence farmer, parent, activist and prolific blogger (www.sharonastyk.com and http://henandharvest.com/). She farms in upstate New York with her husband and four children, raises livestock, and grows and preserves vegetables. She is the author of Depletion and Abundance, and co-author of A Nation of Farmers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Story, June 6, 2009

By 

Joseph J. Brophy (New Rochelle, NY) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil (Paperback)

The authors have pulled together an amazing amount of information and crafted a powerful argument about the urgency of addressing food independence and sustainable lifestyles in America now. These folks are radicals in the best sense of the word - they demonstrate forcefully that radical changes are coming and that radical solutions are needed starting at the grassroots literally and figuratively. They are not crunchy granola eco-freaks, limousine liberals or mystics, but hardheaded pragmatists who lay out a convincing blueprint for the changes that are needed and how to get there. Their vision is of an independent future that shifts power and production from large international companies to individuals, families and communities. They admit that their vision may be unachievable, but explain in convincing detail why it is a future worth struggling for because out current course is unsustainable, immoral and unhealthy for individuals, societies, and the planet. I am not only rooting for them, but I am putting my money where my mouth is and buying 10 copies of this book to give away.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An important challenge for us all, May 25, 2009

By 

Bonnie Bucqueroux "crusty contrarian" (Mason, MI) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil (Paperback)

Sharon Astyk's "Depletion & Abundance" set out the themes associated with the problems we face from climate change, peak oil and industrial agriculture. This book offers the solution - creating 100 million new farmers and 200 million new cooks using sustainable practices. As publisher of Sustainable Farmer (dotcom), I am witnessing the explosion of interest among people who understand the importance of becoming more self-sufficient in raising their own food. From urban gardens to the use of passive solar hoophouses to raise food year-round in cold climates, people are exploring new ways to grow food while reducing our carbon footprint. This book is both inspirational and instructional. I expect that we will look back on it as being as important as Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation.

47 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Mishmash spiced with scolding, October 27, 2009

By 

Harold A. Roth (Elmira, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Nation of Farmers: Defeating the Food Crisis on American Soil (Paperback)

Although there were things I disagreed with in it, I really enjoyed Sharon Astyk's Depletion and Abundance, so I looked forward to getting this book. However, it has been a serious disappointment. If you have read anything at all about the food system or about shifting our economy away from centralization and corporatism to a focus on the local and the individual and the community, you will learn nothing at all from this book.

As I read along, this book struck me as jumbled and surprisingly lacking in a lot of ordinary spellchecking and editorial work, as if there were some rush to get it out. But I figured that at some point the authors were going to discuss how they thought we could indeed actually become a nation of farmers--how, exactly, could individuals be encouraged to take this up? Did they envision hordes of master gardeners going out and teaching the people? Did they see it as a result of government propaganda, like the Victory Gardens they mentioned? Did they believe people were just going to spontaneously get a gardening urge and succeed at it? Would it come only as the result of some great calamity, like in Havana? I didn't expect any completely spelled out program, but I had a right to expect, given the title, the presentation of some kind of idea of how we were supposed to get from where we are now to this bright and glorious day. I kept waiting, checking the number of pages left and thinking "They are not going to have much space to discuss their ideas of how to create this nation." Well, the authors' plan devolves into inheriting a big house in the country and homeschooling all the kids you pumped out before you were enlightened. That, and scolding.

Always, when you are talking about the end of the world nowadays, there has to be scolding and "so there!" and "I told you so." It's a necessary part of the paradigm and probably a major part of the enjoyment to vent indignation at the elitists, those educated people from the coasts, especially the cities, a group Stalin referred to as "rootless cosmopolitans." For example, from p. 326: "If you call the middle of the country 'flyover states' cut it out now--you won't be flying much of anywhere anyway, and they grow your dinner."

Well, actually, NO, they DON'T grow my dinner; they grow GMO soybeans and corn for pointless ethanol with massive taxpayer subsidies. It is not that I can't live without them; it is that they cannot live without me. And as a New Yorker with family from Brooklyn--and you cannot get any more NY than that--I have never once heard any person from the East Coast use the phrase "flyover state." In fact, I have come to believe that this phrase is a Fox News invention that was taken up lovingly by people with serious insecurities about where they live and who they are.

Or how about this, later on the same page: "The reality is that most comparatively well off, well educated people have been doing things that aren't very useful and are soon going to stop being done. Most of the people we have been told we are smarter than are actually doing good and useful work--feeding people, keeping houses running, building things, making things, growing food."

Uh, NO. Most of the people "we" have apparently been told "we" are smarter than are selling plastic pumpkins at Wal-Mart. That does not make them less smart than anyone, but are they doing anything more worthwhile than your average tax lawyer or cube farmer or professor or merchant or musician or beggar? I dare say NO, they are not. And frankly, I have to point out to these authors that they themsleves are not doing anything especially worthwhile. Rather, they are engaging in exactly the kind of elitism that they scold others for.

These authors seem to have no understanding that people's worth is not defined by their jobs, their education, or where they live. How do you think you are going to change the world if from the get-go you are designating great gobs of the population as "useless"? I guess what I didn't realize when I began reading this book is that it is not about changing the world. It is about running away to that big house in the country where you can homeschool your kids and hopefully save your own heinie when the zombies come. Bah humbug.

If you are interested in what rootless cosmpolitans have to say about issues like food, take a look at works by Michael Pollan or the wonderful Urban Homestead. Because the fact of the matter is, we are a nation of rootless cosmopolitans, and we had better start taking that into account if we are going to find a way out of this mess.