Agriculture Science

Many of the men and women doing today's most consequential environmental work - restoring America's grasslands, wildlife, soil, rivers, wetlands, and oceans - would not call themselves environmentalists; they would be too uneasy with the connotations of that word. What drives them is their deep love of the land - the iconic terrain where explorers and cowboys, pioneers, and riverboat captains forged the American identity. They feel a moral responsibility to preserve this heritage and natural wealth.

Embark on a transformative journey to a self-sufficient rural lifestyle! Are you interested in changing your life? Have you heard people talking about the joys of homesteading and wondered if it’s the life for you? Do you want to learn how to plan and budget for your homestead? People have been homesteading since the 1800s, when land was freely given to people, provided they paid a small fee to register the land in their name, live there, and improve the land. Now, it’s a common way of life, a life many people actively choose to live to change their lives for the better.

Barry Estabrook, author of the New York Times bestseller Tomatoland, now explores the dark side of the American pork industry. Drawing on his personal experiences raising pigs as well as his sharp investigative instincts, he covers the range of the human-porcine experience. He embarks on nocturnal feral pig hunts in Texas. He visits farmers who raise animals in vast confinement barns for Smithfield and Tyson, two of the country's biggest pork producers.

Plants grow in it. Animals live in it. Listen more to find out the facts on soil.

Renowned scientist and best-selling author Jane Goodall delivers an eye-opening and empowering book that explores the social and personal significance of what we eat. In Harvest for Hope, Jane Goodall presents an empowering and far-reaching vision for social and environmental transformation through the way we produce and consume the foods we eat.

As seen on the BBC’s This Farming Life. The inspirational story of Lynbreck Croft - a regenerative Scottish farm rooted in local food, community, and the dreams of two women. Lynn and Sandra left their friends, family, and jobs in England to travel north to Scotland to find a bit of land that they could call their own. They had in mind keeping a few chickens, a kitchen garden, and renting out some camping space; instead, they fell in love with Lynbreck Croft - 150 acres of opportunity and beauty, shrouded by the Cairngorms and deep in the Highlands of Scotland.

Colors can help identify healthy substances in foods, such as vitamin A in oranges.

Springtime means it's time to plant corn in the fields again. In September, it's ready to harvest.

Native Americans mastered the cultivation of the "Three Sisters" crops to round out their diet. Can you guess which vegetables these are?

How did the bananas on your breakfast cereal get to your local grocery store? Easy-to-understand text explains how food gets from farms to stores and describes the role of the community workers who make it all possible.

Building Beehives for Dummies is the follow-up book to the best-selling Beekeeping for Dummies. It provides everything you need to learn how to build some of the world's most popular hives and beekeeping accessories. For each design the book includes a detailed materials list (what lumber, hardware, and fasteners you'll need) and step-by-step building instructions.

How do you recognize healthy soil? How much can your existing soil be improved? What are the best amendments to use for your soil? Let Building Soil answer your questions and be your guide on gardening from the ground up. Fertilizing, tilling, weed management, and irrigation all affect the quality of your soil. Using author Elizabeth Murphy’s detailed instructions, anyone can become a successful soil-based gardener, whether you want to start a garden from scratch or improve an existing garden.

Whether you're aware of it or not, you've been born into a system of degeneration that harms the planet and every person and creature alive. In order for transformation to occur, says author Jordan Rubin, "You must make a decision to take steps today to become part of the solution". Planet Heal Thyself will teach you how to start a "revolution of regeneration" in the areas of health and nutrition, sustainable agriculture, and food production as well as economic prosperity and abundance.

In Healing Grounds, Liz Carlisle tells the stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors' methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle.

Building on and connecting histories of food and work, literary criticism of the pastoral and georgic, histories of elite and vernacular science, and histories of reading and writing practices, among other areas of inquiry, Digging the Past offers fine-grained case studies of projects heralded as innovations both in the 17th century and in our own time: composting and soil amendment, local food, natural wine, and hedgerows.

With the help of his pea plants, Gregor Mendel cracked the secret of heredity, how traits are passed from parents to children to grandchildren.

Spend a day on the farm with this fun series! Learn what farmers do, as well as what kinds of crops they grow, animals they care for, and machines they use.

Learning Native Wisdom explains why achieving a sustainable culture is more important than any other challenge we face today. Although there are many measures of a society's progress, Holthaus warns that only a shift away from our current culture of short-term abundance, founded on a belief in infinite economic growth, will represent true advancement. In societies that value the longevity of people, culture, and the environment, subsistence and spirituality soon become closely allied with sustainability.

The story of the "Lentil Underground" begins on a 280-acre homestead rooted in America's Great Plains: the Oien family farm. Forty years ago, corporate agribusiness told small farmers like the Oiens to "get big or get out." But 27-year-old David Oien decided to take a stand, becoming the first in his conservative Montana county to plant a radically different crop: organic lentils. Unlike the chemically dependent grains American farmers had been told to grow, lentils make their own fertilizer and tolerate variable climates, so their farmers aren't beholden to industrial methods.

America's leading nutritionist exposes how the food industry corrupts scientific research for profit. Is chocolate heart-healthy? Does yogurt prevent type-two diabetes? Do pomegranates help cheat death? News accounts bombard us with such amazing claims, report them as science, and influence what we eat. Yet, as Marion Nestle explains, these studies are more about marketing than science; they are often paid for by companies that sell those foods.