The publication of this book has required the cooperation of many people along the way. From its very conception, the project of bringing together experiences from ongoing Farming Systems Research projects has faced a problem of communication due to the dispersal of the participants. Dr. William Partridge and Lynne Goldstein were instrumental in the initial presentation of the symposium on Social Science participation in Farming Systems Research at the 83rd Annual Meeting of the American A...

Food is more than simple sustenance. It feeds our minds as well as our bodies. It nurtures us emotionally as well as physically. It holds memories. In fact, one of the surprising consequences of globalization and urbanization is the expanding web of emotional attachments to farmland, to food growers, and to place. And there is growing affection, too, for home gardening and its “grow your own food” ethos. Without denying the gravity of the problems of feeding the earth’s population while co...

Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire“On a warm Monday morning in 1932, just two days after leaving school, fourteen-year-old Madge was about to join her nine brothers and sisters at Rowntree’s. The smell of chocolate was in the air but as she walked up the road, her footsteps slowed at the daunting thought of what lay ahead…”From the 1930s through to the 1980s, as Britain endured war, depressi...

This is Madge’s story, one of five stories extracted from THE SWEETHEARTS.Whether in wartime or peace, tales of love, laughter and hardship from the girls in the Rowntrees factory in Yorkshire.“On the morning of her Rowntrees job interview, on a warm Monday morning in July 1932, Fourteen-year-old Madge Fisher stood fidgeting in the hallway of her terraced house while her mother, Margaret, pinned up her hair and then inspected her from top to toe. ‘Hands,’ her mother said, an...

Stop Being Manipulated by the Animal Foods IndustryStop the meat industry from eating into your wallet. Few Americans are aware of the realities of the economic system that supports our country's supply of animal foods. Yet these forces affect us in ways we can hardly imagine. Though we only fork over a few dollars per pound of meat products at the grocery store, we end up paying much more than that in tax dollar-fueled government subsidies—$38 b...

This demonization of the overweight by the media and politicians is unrelenting. Sarah Boseley, the Guardian's award-winning health editor, argues it's time we understood the complex reality of what makes us fat.Speaking to behavioural scientists and industry experts, yo-yo dieters and people who have gone under the knife,Boseley builds a picture of an obesogenic society - one where we're constantly bombarded by the twin evils of big budget food marketing and the diet ind...

If a city is its people, and its people are what they eat, then shouldn’t food play a larger role in our dialogue about how and where we live? The food of a metropolis is essential to its character. Native plants, proximity to farmland, the locations of supermarkets, immigration, the role chefs can and should play in society - how a city nourishes itself makes a statement about the kind of city it is.With a cornucopia of essays on comestibles, The Edible City considers how...

This leading dictionary contains over 8,000 entries covering all aspects of food and nutrition, diet and health. Jargon-free definitions clearly explain even the most technical of nutritional terms. From absinthe to zymogens, it covers types of food (including everyday foods and little-known foods, e.g. payusnaya), nutritional information, vitamins, minerals, and key scientific areas including metabolism and genomics. An essential online A...

Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian and the Dachau concentration camp had an organic herb garden. Vegetarianism, organic farming, and other such practices have enticed a wide variety of Germans, from socialists, liberals, and radical anti-Semites in the nineteenth century to fascists, communists, and Greens in the twentieth century. Corinna Treitel offers a fascinating new account of how Germans became world leaders in developing more 'natural' ways to eat and farm. Used to conserve nutritional ...

Offers a rare exploration of the substantial environmental impact of capitalist sugar agriculture, colonial settlement, and the Atlantic slave trade on the Caribbean island of NevisIn this deeply researched and multifaceted study, Marco G. Meniketti demonstrates how the landscape of the small Caribbean island of Nevis preserves and reveals artifacts and evidence of the highly complex and interrelated seventeenth- to nineteenth-century “Atlantic Economy,” comprising...

America has a perplexing, multifaceted problem that combines hunger, obesity, and unhealthy food. This book examines how this situation was created and shows how people working together can resolve this longstanding issue.The United States—one of the world's wealthiest and resource-richest nations—has multiple food-related problems: declining food quality due to industrialization of its production, obesity across all age groups, and a surprisingly large number of households sufferi...

In the midst of the Great Depression, an elite group of New Yorkers lived seemingly unaffected by the economic calamity. They were writers, playwrights, journalists, artists, composers, singers, actors, adventurers and socialites. Newspaperman Maury Paul dubbed them the Cafe Society.It was the time of Prohibition, speakeasies and exclusive nightclubs for the smart set to see and be seen. Their lives were the stuff of newspaper columns and magazine articles, eagerly read by millions...