Reviewed by Larry Siegel

I do not read books on matters medical. Until. Having conducted more than half my life guided by the philosophy that less is more, I was drawn to Less Medicine, More Health like a bee to nectar. I was not disappointed. Fair warning: if you are comfortable with conventional medical care, with its plethora of diagnostic tests and pharmacological solutions, do not, I repeat, do not read this book. If, however, you harbor, with me (healthy) reservations that all is not healthy in the health-care world, then this book becomes a must-read. Dr. H. Gilbert Welch has turned the prevailing assumptions that drive medical care on their ears. I have the notion that were the author to appear before a jury of his peers, he would be judged a heretic and burned at the stake.
[Read more…] about Less Medicine, More Health: 7 Assumptions That Drive Too Much Medical Care

This is such a delightful book. Courtney White takes a very serious subject, climate change, and addresses this massive topic in an always upbeat manner with a very light touch. He took a trip around the world to visit a number of exemplary farmers, ranchers, wild life experts, ecologists, business people and scientists who are demonstrating successful models for bringing carbon back out of the atmosphere and into the soil to build stable humus. And that premise (that we can bring atmospheric CO2 levels down to climactically safe levels) is the reason for the “Hope” in the title.
[Read more…] about Grass, Soil, Hope: A Journey through Carbon Country 

Reviewed by Julie Rawson

This is such a delightful book. Courtney White takes a very serious subject, climate change, and addresses this massive topic in an always upbeat manner with a very light touch. He took a trip around the world to visit a number of exemplary farmers, ranchers, wild life experts, ecologists, business people and scientists who are demonstrating successful models for bringing carbon back out of the atmosphere and into the soil to build stable humus. And that premise (that we can bring atmospheric CO2 levels down to climactically safe levels) is the reason for the “Hope” in the title.
[Read more…] about Grass, Soil, Hope: A Journey through Carbon Country

Reviewed by Jon Magee

Monica White’s recent book Freedom Farmers covers the important but overlooked history of the southern Black farmers who built cooperatives as a strategy for survival and self-determination. As White shows, this cooperative legacy prefigures contemporary urban farming and the movements for food justice and food sovereignty in the twenty-first century.

The book begins with a survey of “intellectual traditions in Black agriculture,” profiling Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and W.E.B. DuBois. Circa 1900, the vast majority of
African Americans lived on farms in the rural south, and each of these thinkers took seriously the need to improve the lives of Black farmers. Washington founded the Tuskegee Institute and related institutions for exactly this purpose, establishing a loan fund for Black farmers; a regional conference for Black farmers; the Negro Cooperative Farm Demonstration Service; and the Tuskegee Agricultural Experiment Station, eventually headed by Carver. “Tuskegee was the first large-scale program of any kind in the United States to support the agricultural version of the American Dream” for African Americans, and its programs catered directly to the most urgent educational and practical needs of Black farmers, from farm management to soil fertility to foraged foods. DuBois, for his part, studied cooperative institutions as a basis for community self determination and collective advancement. He also actively promoted cooperatives through the Negro Cooperative Guild, “a national study circle [created] to inspire Black cooperative business development around the country”.
[Read more…] about Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement

review by Jack Kittredge

Freedom Farmers is an interesting amalgamation. In her introduction, professor White introduces a theoretical framework she calls ‘collective agency and community resilience’ (CACR). Although it was a little hard for me to wade through the verbiage, I think collective agency refers to a group of people acting out of a belief in their mutual success, and community resilience means community-based forms of social organization that respond to natural and human-induced disasters.

White then uses this framework to look at African American practices connecting land, food, and freedom. Although focusing on the Southern Cooperative Movement of the late 1960s through 1974, she sees early slave gardens at the time of the Middle Passage as good examples of CACR: independent production grounds controlled by slaves representing a strategy of resistance to a corrupt system and an effort to create food security.
[Read more…] about Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance ad the Black Freedom Movement

review by Liz Henderson

If you are looking for a deeper understanding of the ills in our food system and how to address them than “vote with your fork,” this is a book you should read as soon as possible. Land Justice stands in contrast with so many food movement books that never question the basic premise that with a few adjustments, we can correct the excesses of the capitalist marketplace. Eric Holt-Gimenez lays out the book’s basic premise: “Racial injustice and the stark inequities in property and wealth in the US countryside aren’t just a quirk of history, but a structural feature of capitalist agriculture. This means that in order to succeed in building an alternative agrarian future, today’s social movements will have to dismantle those structures. It is the relationships in the food system, and how we govern them, that really matter.” (P. 2)
[Read more…] about Land Justice: Re-imagining Land, Food and the Commons in the United States

review by Julie Rawson

We are relatively short in beekeeping experience and wisdom at Many Hands Organic Farm. Way back in about 1981 or so we got a beehive under the auspices of the Dorchester Gardenlands Preserve in Boston and put it in our tiny side yard. The bees died. But I must say that I had no training from an-yone on how to manage them, and as I was managing 4 children under 4 at the time, I perhaps didn’t have the energy or time to educate myself. We brought that hive out here to Barre in 1982 and perhaps put in another batch of bees that died. After a hiatus of 34 years, Jason, one of our most enthusi-astic employees, got us started with bees last year, under the guiding hands of Roland Sevigny and Charlotte Trim. They did fantastically, but alas, we missed the window for adding more frames and the queen took off with half the hive. There was no viable queen left in the hive and the colony died. They did produce a wonderful supply of scrumptious honey, however. With more help from Roland and also Dan Conlon, Clare has taken over the bee yard, and we have added another hive to our holdings. The bees have been here two weeks. Although we have a bunch of beautiful fruit trees in bloom and a plethora of dandelions to feast on, the bees have barely come out due to the constant cold, rain, cloudiness and drizzle. Hopefully with next week’s forecasted warm and sunnier weather the girls will take flight and start working full-time. [Read more…] about The Bee: A Natural History

Reviewed by Ellen Walther Sousa

An established meadow can store 70% more carbon than a traditional monocrop turf lawn, and can improve the environment by supporting pollinators, increasing biodiversity, and enriching soil health as well. In Lawns into Meadows, Owen Wormser uses his wealth of experience to create a readable and up-to-date manual of meadow startup and maintenance for properties large and small.

Far from being as simple as throwing down a packet of wild flower seeds and letting your lawn ‘go wild’, a successful lawn-to-meadow conversion is generally a multi-year process, requiring knowledgeable site assessment, careful plant selection and design, and ongoing upkeep in the form of an annual mowing or weeding out of woody trees.
[Read more…] about Lawns into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape

review by Eli Rubin

This book is about the unsung heroes of agriculture: Predatory insects, spiders and mites.  The book is filled with gruesome action shots of bugs eating bugs, just the sort of thing to inspire you to go out and make habitat for these beneficial insects.  Where this book is unique is its sole focus on native beneficial insects (as opposed to the introduced beneficial insects most common commercially), and the tools and tricks needed to increase their population in your own farm or garden.  The book pulls examples from large farms and ranches, but also contains sidebars of what-this-means-for-home-gardens as well.
[Read more…] about Farming with Native Beneficial Insects. Ecological Pest Control Solutions

reviewed by Jack Kittredge

This is an impressive little book. Besides a detailed 13-page introduction about plants and pollinators, which ought to answer the questions of most people about pollination – its biology, evolution, importance, rewards and risks – the following 200+ pages are devoted to the 100 plants in the title.

They are divided into native wildflowers (43), native trees and shrubs (32), introduced trees and shrubs (2), introduced herbs and ornamentals (12), and native and non-native bee pasture plants (11). The book is intended for use throughout North America and each plant is accompanied by a map showing it’s native range. A list of the plant’s uses is also provided and is very helpful as anyone tending to the needs of pollinators is likely also attuned to other benefits of plants such as reclaiming land, restoring wetlands, providing hedgerows, hosting butterflies, providing nutrition or herbal medicines, or simply looking beautiful. [Read more…] about 100 Plants to Feed the Bees: Provide a Healthy Habitat to Help Pollinators Thrive