Against the Grain : How Farmers Around the Globe Are Transforming Agriculture to Nourish the World and Heal the Planet

Description

When famine, drought, and malnutrition plagued their communities, these farmers tried something revolutionary—and managed to nourish their families and their land in the process.Farmers in some of the world's oldest agricultural areas—Africa's Great Rift Valley, India's Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Highlands of Central America, and the Great Plains of the U.S.—were toiling year after year, only to find that modern industrial agriculture was turning on itself. The very practices that they were using to grow food yesterday were making it more difficult to grow food today. Pesticides used to protect their crops were killing off beneficial biodiversity. Monocropping was depleting the soil of necessary nutrients. And deforestation was making the land hotter and drier. Industrial agriculture's effects on our climate and environment were multiplying and worsening, until the very families growing the world's food were starving.But some of these...