Agribusiness and primary industries Books

Book SynopsisCereal grains like wheat and rice are important, because they are the basis of most food supplies. Yields of such crops have increased dramatically during the past 100 years and especially since 1950, leading to what was often called the Green Revolution. This book examines why the United States, India, Britain and Mexico each sought to develop high yield wheat production. Although the increase in yield has been attributed to plant breeding science, security concerns and management of foreign exchange were prime motivators of the new technologies. This relationship has not been previously developed in studies of agricultural modernization, and will plague future efforts to make agriculture equitable and sustainable.Trade Review'...an important book on the development of wheat breeding in the United States, Great Britain, India and Mexico during the 20th century...The book's strength is its descriptive power, especially in intellectual hisotr...Throughout, Perkins provides his readers with an excellent introduction to a variety of complex topics...' * Kathy J Cooke, Endeavour Vol. 22 (3), 1998. *Table of Contents1. Political Ecology and Yield Transformation ; 2. Wheat, People, and Plant Breeding ; 3. Wheat Breeding: Coalescence of a Modern Science, 1900-1939 ; 4. Plant Breeding in its Institutional and Political Economic Setting, 1900-1940 ; 5. The Rockefeller Foundation in Mexico: The New International Politics for Plant Breeding, 1941-1945 ; 6. Hunger, Overpopulation, and Natural Security: A New Strategic Theory for Plant Breeding, 1945-1956 ; 7. Wheat Breeding and the Exercise of American Power, 1940-1970 ; 8. Wheat Breeding and the Consolidation of Indian Autonomy, 1940-1970 ; 9. Wheat Breeding and the Reconstruction of Post-Imperial Britain, 1935-1954 ; 10. Science and the Green Revolution, 1945-1975 ; Epilogue: Implications of History the Future

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Book SynopsisSpanning the years 1840-1875, Beyond the Boundaries focuses on the settlement of Upper Michigan''s Keweenaw Peninsula, telling the story of reluctant pioneers who attempted to establish a decent measure of comfort, control, and security in what was in many ways a hostile environment. Moving beyond the technological history of the period found in his previous book Cradle to the Grave: Life, Work, and Death at the Lake Superior Copper Mines (OUP 1991), Lankton here focuses on the people of this region and how the copper mining affected their daily lives. A truly first-rate social history, Beyond the Boundaries will appeal to historians of the frontier and of Michigan and the Great Lakes region, as well as historians of technology, labor, and everyday life.Trade Review"The social history of the mining frontier should be written and researched as well as Larry Lankton's Beyond the Boundaries....The book is a treat to read and a worthy contribution to helping us understand frontier mining societies."--Mining History News"To tell his story, the author has mined diaries, manuscripts, newspapers, and company records, as well as a wealth of other primary and secondary literature. What emerges is a richly textured story that Lankton recounts with authority and gusto. It is a book that will interest local historians and those whose focus is social or western history."--Labor History"With clarity, precision, and sound scholarship, Lankton examines everyday life on the Keweenaw frontier from 1840-1875, the years of growing pains for the infant copper industry...Lankton describes with vivid detail the tedious day of a hard rock miner...Beyond the Boundaries is local history at its best. Lankton has provided a scholarly look at early life on the copper range in Michigan amid the transformation of a wilderness. The net of topics is widely thrown, but Lankton articulates everyday life based on the facts and with eloquent interpretation...Beyond the Boundaries belongs on the shelf of every library in Michigan next to its copy of Cradle to Grave."--Michigan Historical Review"Conducting two decades of research, assisted by student projects, [Lankton] has delved extensively into diaries, company personnel files, and local government records to profile the human aspects of this mining region....The large amount of new historical material is arranged by category and well indexed. This is no ordinary anecdotal history....As an academic work it is refreshingly unquantitative: the reader is not inundated....This broad-minded treatment of a major, now-dormant mining region should interest practicing economic geologists."--Economic Geology"In this, his third book on the region, Larry Lankton examines the simultaneous development of Keweenaw mining and the attendant cultural and social institutions of the people who worked and lived there. What he describes is a world far removed from either civilization or the frontier....Lankton discusses a number of fascinating issues....By relying on primary sources and by covering a breadth of topics, the author demonstrates extensive knowledge of the history of the region, and uncovers a number interesting avenues of research for the Keweenaw district."--Journal of Economic History"Larry Lankton's Beyond the Boundaries invites comparison with the best studies of 'everyday life' in similar settings, and with classics such as Rockdale and Amoskeag. It is an impressively researched and gracefully narrated companion-piece to his Cradle to Grave volume."--Robert C. Post, Past President of the Society for the History of TechnologyTable of Contents1: Water, Woods, and Winter: A Special Sense of Place 2: Heaving Up Jonah: The Travail of Travel 3: Settling In: Camps, Communities, Houses, and Hotels 4: A Lapful of Apples: Foodways in the Far North 5: Keeping House: All the Work of the Family 6: Tasks at Hand: Making a Living: Men and Women, Boys and Girls 7: Saints and Scholars: Village Churches and Schools 8: The Sins of the Body: Maladies, Medicines, and Frontier Physicians 9: Ice Carnivals, Camels, and Sunday Trombones: Pioneer Pastimes 10: Shattered Hopes and Broken Prospects: Lunatics, Larcenists, and Lives of Woe 11: Transformations: A Long-Lived Frontier

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Book SynopsisOn April 10, 1966, a crowd of 10,000 farm workers and supporters gathered at the California state capitol to celebrate victory in one of the most significant strikes in American history--one that made Cesar Chavez famous as leader of the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). In Why David Sometimes Wins, Marshall Ganz tells the story of the UFW''s ground-breaking victory, drawing out larger lessons from this dramatic tale. A longtime leader in the movement and current lecturer in public policy at Harvard, he offers unique insight. Since the 1900s, large-scale agricultural enterprises had relied on migrant labor--a cheap, unorganized, and powerless workforce. In 1965, after successive waves of attempts at organizing this large and growing population, the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters, and the three-year-old NFWA all found themselves on the ground, recruiting members. That year, some 800 Filipino grape workers began a strike, under the aegis of theTrade ReviewThis throughly documented account is support by insights and evidence from Marshall's personal experience, and many will read it as much for its exciting story of the farm workers' struggle as for its contribution to the theory of social movements.... Recommended. * Social & Behaviorial Science *In Why David Sometimes Wins, Ganz demonstrates his own marvelous story telling skill in his narration of the farm workers' movement in America... It's about organizing and tactics that work. Ganz describes them in a unique and interesting manner from his own vantage point within the farm workers' movement. WHy David Sometimes Wins is a valuable resource for teachers and students of community organizing, labor history and the dynamics of social change. * Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare *A brilliant new book. * The Nation *Why David Sometimes Wins is an exceptional book that will be of widespread interest to scholars and activists alike. * American Journal of Sociology *This book is a must read for organizers. The analysis of how a small and poor, but motivated, group of workers triggered a social movement provides invaluable lessons on what to do and not do as we struggle with the challenges of the 21st century. * Andy Stern, President, Service Employees International Union *Table of ContentsPreface ; 1. Introduction: How David Beat Goliath ; 2. Beginnings: Immigrants, Radicals, and the AFL (1900-1959) ; 3. New Opportunities, New Initiatives: (1959-1962) ; 4. A Storm Gathers: Two Responses (1963-1965) ; 5. The Great Delano Grape Strike (1965-1966) ; 6. Meeting the Counter-Attack (1966) ; 7. Launching a New Union (1966-1967) ; Epilogue ; Appendix ; Notes ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisAgriculture, one of the oldest human occupations, is practised all over the world, using techniques ranging from the profoundly traditional to the most scientifically advanced. Without it we would starve. Yet how many of us understand what is happening in the fields that we see as we drive through the countryside? How often do we think about the origins of the food in our trolley?In this Very Short Introduction Paul Brassley and Richard Soffe explain what farmers do and why they do it. Beginning with the most basic resource, the soil, they show why it is important, and how farmers can increase its productivity, before turning to the plants and animals that grow on it, and tracing the connections between their biology and the various ways in which farmers work with them. The authors conclude by looking at some of the controversial issues facing contemporary agriculture: its sustainability; its impact on wildlife and landscape; issues of animal welfare; and the affect of climate change and the development of genetically modified organisms on farmers.ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.Trade ReviewWhen YouGov-Cambridge conducted a poll in 2012 they found that 82 per cent of people have a special place in their hearts for agriculture. However the poll also revealed that only 28 per cent of people feel they know much about the sector. So congratulations to the Oxford University Press for supplying a book that explains it all. * Mark Metcalf, Unite Landworker *Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Soils and crops ; Farm animals ; Feeding the food industry ; Inputs into agriculture ; Modern and traditional farming ; Farming futures ; Further reading ; Index

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Book SynopsisTomorrow''s Table argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture--genetic engineering and organic farming--is key to helping feed the world''s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. Pamela Ronald, a geneticist, and her husband, Raoul Adamchak, an organic farmer, take the reader inside their lives for roughly a year, allowing us to look over their shoulders so that we can see what geneticists and organic farmers actually do. Readers see the problems that farmers face, trying to provide larger yields without resorting to expensive or environmentally hazardous chemicals, a problem that will loom larger and larger as the century progresses. They learn how organic farmers and geneticists address these problems. The book is for consumers, farmers, and policy decision makers who want to make food choices and policy that will support ecologically responsible farming practices, and for anyone who wants accurate information about organic farming, genetic enTable of ContentsForeword to the First Edition by Sir Gordon Conway Foreword to the Second Edition by Michael Specter Preface to the First Edition Preface to the Second Edition Acknowledgments About the Authors Part I: Introduction 1. Green Revolution 2.0 Part II: The Farm 2. Why Organic Agriculture? 3. The Tools of Organic Agriculture Part III: The Laboratory 4. The Tools of Genetic Engineering Part IV: Consumers 5. Legislating Lunch 6. Whom Can We Trust? 7. Are Genetically Engineered Foods Safe to Eat? 8. The Mistrust of Science Part V: The Environment 9. Conserving Wildlands 10. Weeds, Gene Flow, and the Environment Part VI: Ownership 11. Who Owns the Seed? 12. The Seed Industry: Accelerating or Impeding Innovation? Part VII: The World 13. Feeding the World Ethically 14. Choosing Innovation Part VIII: Dinner 15. Deconstructing Dinner: Genetically Engineered, Organically Grown Glossary References Index

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Book SynopsisNearly a century before it became known as Silicon Valley, the Santa Clara Valley was world-renowned for something else: the succulent fruits and vegetables grown in its fertile soil. Virtually all farms were owned by whites, but the soil was largely worked by Asian immigrants. In Harvesting the American Dream, Cecilia Tsu tells the overlooked and intertwined histories of the land of the Santa Clara Valley and the Asian immigrants who cultivated it. Weaving together the story of the three overlapping waves of Asian migration from China, Japan, and the Philippines in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Tsu offers a comparative history that sheds light on white and Asian Californians'' understandings of race, gender, and national identity.From the mid-nineteenth century on, white farmers had an increased need for labor, and Chinese immigrants willingly and disproportionately filled it. Despite this common labor arrangement, the idea of the independent family farm, worked solely by faTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ; Introduction ; Chapter 1. "Independent of the Unskilled Chinaman": Race, Labor, and Family Farming ; Chapter 2. Transplanted: The World of Early Issei Farmers ; Chapter 3. Pioneering Men and Women: Japanese Gender Relations in Rural California ; Chapter 4. "Defending the American Farm Home": Japanese Farm Families and the Anti-Japanese Movement ; Chapter 5. From Menace to Model: Reshaping the "Oriental Problem" ; Chapter 6. "Reds, communists, and fruit strikers": Filipinos and the Great Depression ; Epilogue ; Notes ; Bibliography ; Index

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Book SynopsisDescribes the formation of a masculine ideology in the decades prior to the war, and shows how it thrived - on the job, and through union politics. This title provides a context for our ideas of postwar masculinity and whiteness and finally returns the men of the home front to our reckoning of the Greatest Generation and the New Deal era.Trade Review"Matthew L. Basso's evidence and interpretations regarding the significance of masculinity to the values, actions, and concerns of working-class civilian men in Montana's copper industry substantially revise our understandings of the middle decades of the twentieth century." (Karen Anderson, author of Wartime Women)"

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Book SynopsisDescribes the formation of a masculine ideology in the decades prior to the war, and shows how it thrived - on the job, and through union politics. This title provides a context for our ideas of postwar masculinity and whiteness and finally returns the men of the home front to our reckoning of the Greatest Generation and the New Deal era.Trade Review"Matthew L. Basso's evidence and interpretations regarding the significance of masculinity to the values, actions, and concerns of working-class civilian men in Montana's copper industry substantially revise our understandings of the middle decades of the twentieth century." (Karen Anderson, author of Wartime Women)"

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Book SynopsisWith a timely tale of a boat and the people it carried, of fisheries exploited, and of fortunes won and lost, this book offers an environmental history, a journey through time and across the sea, charting the ebb and flow of the cobalt waters of the Pacific coast.Trade Review"From shrimp in the Sea of Cortez to sardines and Pacific Ocean perch on the West Coast, from salmon to king crab, the story of these fisheries is consistent with the spread of fisheries-and overfishing-in general, from coastal waters near major population centers to areas that are increasingly farther offshore, deeper, and more remote. Along with the effects this approach has had on marine life, The Western Flyer also illuminates the impact it has had on coastal communities. Bailey uses this boat to help people see how we have serially depleted one population of marine life after another, and how we have repeated the rationale justifying it all across time and place without learning from past experiences." (John Hocevar, Oceans campaign director, Greenpeace USA)

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Book SynopsisThere has been an increase in food price instability in recent years, with varied consequences for farmers, market participants, and consumers. Does financial speculation affect food price volatility? This book address this and other questions.

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Book SynopsisThe farm crisis of the 1980s was the greatest economic disaster to hit rural America since the Depression. The crisis gave rise to a social trauma that affects farmers in the 21st century. This is a chronicle of the experience.

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Book SynopsisThe farm crisis of the 1980s was the greatest economic disaster to hit rural America since the Depression. The crisis gave rise to a social trauma that affects farmers in the 21st century. This is a chronicle of the experience.Trade Review"Dudley presents a subtle, insightful, and nuanced treatment of the rural 'community' itself, emphasizing its divisions and contradictions.... [A] very good and enlightening book. With Debt and Dispossession, Kathryn Dudley joins the ranks of such anthropologists as Jane Adams, Deborah Fink, and Sonya Salomon." - David Danbom, Rural History; "Dudley writes with rare skill and passion. This is a mid-stream account of America coming of age. Midwesterners are protagonists who may yet wrest a more satisfactory resolution, thanks to this superb contribution." - Deborah Fink, Annals of Iowa

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Book SynopsisAsks whether traditional observations about farm families apply to three hundred Iowa children who grew up with some tie to the land during the agricultural crisis of the 1980s, a time of widespread farm bankruptcies and factory closings. The answer, the authors show, is a resounding yes.Trade Review"What is it about 'ties to the land' that influences the development of young people? The answers the authors provide are not only analytically compelling, but they reveal invaluable insights for solving many of the problems facing our urban and suburban school communities as they struggle to provide meaningful environments for socializing and educating our adolescents into productive adults." (American Journal of Sociology) "A welcome corrective to the literature on development, which has focused almost exclusively on metropolitan areas.... Through their careful connection of life choices to life chances in historical context, the authors offer a model of sociological inquiry worthy of emulation." (Social Forces)"

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Book SynopsisThe Lysenko affair was perhaps the most bizarre chapter in the history of modern science. For thirty years, until 1965, Soviet genetics was dominated by a fanatical agronomist who achieved dictatorial power over genetics and plant science as well as agronomy. A standard source both for Soviet specialists and for sociologists of science.American Journal of Sociology Joravsky has produced . . . the most detailed and authoritative treatment of Lysenko and his view on genetics.New York Times Book Review

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Book SynopsisAfter the American Civil War, agricultural reformers in the South called for an end to unrestricted grazing of livestock on unfenced land. Shawn Kantor asserts that this conflict was centered on anticipated benefits from fencing livestock rather than on class, cultural or ideological differences.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1: The Dynamics of Institutional Change: An Analytical Framework 2: The Economic Benefits of Livestock Enclosure 3: Translating Economic Interest into Action: Distributional Conflicts and the Dynamics of Institutional Change 4: Resolving the Distributional Conflicts 5: The Politics of Property Rights 6: Uncovering the Ideology of Property Rights Reform in the Postbellum South 7: Property Rights and Populists: The Political Consequences of Livestock Enclosure Epilogue: A Note on Institutional Change, Efficiency, and Democracy App. A: Procedure Used to Calculate Expected Savings from the Stock Law App. B: Data Appendix to Carroll and Jackson County Election Regressions Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisAfter the American Civil War, agricultural reformers in the South called for an end to unrestricted grazing of livestock on unfenced land. Shawn Kantor asserts that this conflict was centered on anticipated benefits from fencing livestock rather than on class, cultural or ideological differences.

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Book SynopsisA history of China's Xinjiang Province that shows how the hunt for natural resources determined how Chinese and Russian authorities viewed and tried to control it over the years.

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Book SynopsisA history of China’s Xinjiang Province that shows how the hunt for natural resources determined how Chinese and Russian authorities viewed and tried to control it over the years.

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Book SynopsisPacyga guides readers through the history of Chicago's Union Stock Yard as only an insider can, covering the rough and toxic life inside the plants and their lasting effects on the world outside.Trade Review"For many people Henry Ford's 1913 Detroit assembly line is a symbol of technological triumph. This book shows that Chicago's 1865 disassembly line was an earlier more complete wonder, rapidly transporting animals, keeping them healthy and watered, dividing them into a wide variety of of products, communicating ownership and destination, and keeping meticulous accounts of all the processes. The speed and dexterity were put on display, proudly exploiting labor, advertising efficiency, making Chicago incredibly wealthy. This is a stunning account of the growth, complexity, rewards, and costs of modernity."--Garry Wills, author of Lincoln at Gettysburg "Pacyga has taken as his subject a single square mile, a small patch of urban land on the south side of Chicago, and has told an epic story--the rise of the Union Stockyards and Packingtown, their heyday as a great industrial complex and engine of modern America, their precipitous decline after World War II and their unexpected recent resurgence as a site of new industrial possibilities. It is a big story of rapid, and frequently unsettling, economic, technological, and social change, and Pacyga has told it in a vivid and compelling way."--Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago Winner--2016 "Illinois State Historical Society's Russell P. Strange Book of the Year " "Pacyga has written an intimate, elegant, fascinating, and informative story of one of America's greatest industrial complexes. As Pacyga shows, the dismal, exploitative, vibrant, and contested histories of the stockyards and the meatpacking factories are illustrative of both the fractured dynamics of American industrial capitalism and the rise and fall of the great industrial city of Chicago. Slaughterhouse is vital reading for all concerned with urban, industrial, and social history."--Robert Lewis, author of Chicago Made: Factory Networks in the Industrial Metropolis "Pacyga is the great bard of Chicago-historian, raconteur, social critic. Slaughterhouse is a critically important book about one of the city's epic neighborhoods."--Robert Slayton, author of Back of the Yards

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Book SynopsisThe author here examines eighteen farming communities of Tanga Region, Tanzania, an area of rural poverty with a long history of drought, floods, food shortages, famine, and social and economic disruption to understand what the farmers there know about their environment and which historical and economic factors play into the lack of food security.

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Book SynopsisThe nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically separating them from markets, capitalism, and urban influences. The Nature of the Future aims to remake this staid vision. Emily Pawley examines a place and period of enormous agricultural vitalityantebellum New York Stateand follows thousands of improving agriculturists, part of the largest, most diverse, and most active scientific community in nineteenth-century America. Pawley shows that these improvers practiced a kind of science hard for contemporary readers to recognize, in which profit was not only a goal but also the underlying purpose of the natural world. Far from producing a more rational vision of nature, northern farmers practiced a form of science where conflicting visions of the future landscape appeared and evaporated in quick succession. Drawing from environmental history, US history and the history of science, and extensively mining a wealth of antebellum agricultural publications, The Nature of the Future uncovers the rich loam hiding beneath ostensibly infertile scholarly terrain, revealing a surprising area of agricultural experimentation that transformed American landscapes and American ideas of expertise, success, and exploitation.

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Book SynopsisFor most people, grocery shopping is a mundane activity. Few stop to think about the massive, global infrastructure that makes it possible to buy Chilean grapes in a Philadelphia supermarket in the middle of winter. Yet every piece of food represents an interlocking system of agriculture, manufacturing, shipping, logistics, retailing, and nonprofits that controls what we eator don't. The Problem with Feeding Cities is a sociological and historical examination of how this remarkable network of abundance and convenience came into being over the last century. It looks at how the US food system transformed from feeding communities to feeding the entire nation, and it reveals how a process that was once about fulfilling basic needs became focused on satisfying profit margins. It is also a story of how this system fails to feed people, especially in the creation of food deserts. Andrew Deener shows that problems with food access are the result of infrastructural failings stemming from how Trade Review"...a major addition to the literature on food infrastructure history and analysis." * Civil Engineering Magazine *"We take food for granted—that it will always be on the shelf, mostly affordable, and safe to eat. Andrew Deener no longer takes the food supply for granted and in this book, using the City of Philadelphia as a case study, examines the high-volume, high-variety food system on which the U.S. relies." * CHoW Line *"The Problem with Feeding Cities is a tour de force in its examination of the logistical and supply chain effects on our food system...[It] is a valuable book for those interested in food insecurity and organizational sociology." * Sociological Forum *"Deener urges us to think of food as similar to other goods, [such as] electricity [and] housing that changed dramatically in the twentieth century. He does an excellent job taking the reader on the trip--by boat, by railroad, long haulers, and cars--to see how food gets from point A to point B (with a lot of other points in-between)...Changes in food distribution in the twentieth century led to much of the infrastructural decay we see in US cities in the 21st century and exacerbated food inequalities that we still see today." * Urbanities: The Journal of Urban Ethnography *"Andrew Deener’s fascinating book represents an important contribution to the sparsely populated field of social studies of food infrastructure. . . . The Problem with Feeding Cities represents an ambitious attempt to unpack the black box of fresh food provisioning in the United States and theorize the role of food infrastructure in shaping the contemporary city. . . .[It] reveals the importance of understanding what stands between the proverbial farm and table in terms of crafting policies and theories that can adequately confront the 'problem with feeding cities.'" * Gastronomica *“Most of us give little thought to the question of how our food gets to the grocery store, or of how and why this matters. But Deener has spent years investigating the hidden infrastructure that shapes what we grow, what we eat, what we spend, and, most surprisingly, how we’ve built cities, suburbs, and transit networks around the world. The Problem with Feeding Cities is a revelatory study, loaded with ideas about how to create healthier, more sustainable systems for our changing world.” -- Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People and Heat Wave“This is the food chain fully traced and newly understood. We learn how grocery companies, road builders, and bar codes have shaped cities and fields—and what goes in our mouths. Deener combines politics, technology, and taste for lessons in urban history, consumption, and the wiles and woes of business. He brings the concept of infrastructure to explanatory life.” -- Harvey Molotch, author of Where Stuff Comes From“The Problem with Feeding Cities is a masterpiece of sociological imagination, making the familiar grocery store aisle into a strange concoction of methyl bromide and Universal Product Codes. Deener narrates the ‘social life of infrastructure’ over a century of history and with a remarkable variety of foodstuff examples. This book is a model of urban, economic, organizational, and environmental sociology.” -- Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block"What is singularly insightful about this volume is that it disaggregates the food system, showing how supplying cities with grains or meats, about which much has been written...is quite different from feeding cities fresh fruits and vegetables...[Deener] underlines the epistemic consequences of separating rural sociology from urban sociology and a sociology of production from a sociology of consumption, with the ties between the two falling out of analytical view. That sets his task for the rest of the book, which includes exemplary chapters on technologies and techniques of classifying uneven organic material." * City & Community *"Sociologists with interests in food, urban studies, and politics will find The Problem with Feeding Cities to be a helpful resource for many years to come. Any evolution of our food distribution system that expands beyond today’s supermarket model (e.g., home delivery) will require new infrastructure to succeed. Deener’s framing of the problem of getting food to people will help us keep track of the ways industry and government mutually adapt to stock the household pantries of the future." * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsPreface One / The Transformation of the Food System Two / The Rise and Fall of the Urban Middlemen Three / Infrastructural Exclusion Four / The Bar Code: A Micro-technical Force of Change Five / Defeating Seasons: Reassembling the Produce Aisle Six / Cracks in the System Seven / Food Distribution as Unfinished Infrastructure Eight / The Problem with Feeding Cities Acknowledgments Methods Appendix: Strategic Variation and Historical Excavation Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"...a major addition to the literature on food infrastructure history and analysis." * Civil Engineering Magazine *"We take food for granted—that it will always be on the shelf, mostly affordable, and safe to eat. Andrew Deener no longer takes the food supply for granted and in this book, using the City of Philadelphia as a case study, examines the high-volume, high-variety food system on which the U.S. relies." * CHoW Line *"The Problem with Feeding Cities is a tour de force in its examination of the logistical and supply chain effects on our food system...[It] is a valuable book for those interested in food insecurity and organizational sociology." * Sociological Forum *"Deener urges us to think of food as similar to other goods, [such as] electricity [and] housing that changed dramatically in the twentieth century. He does an excellent job taking the reader on the trip--by boat, by railroad, long haulers, and cars--to see how food gets from point A to point B (with a lot of other points in-between)...Changes in food distribution in the twentieth century led to much of the infrastructural decay we see in US cities in the 21st century and exacerbated food inequalities that we still see today." * Urbanities: The Journal of Urban Ethnography *"Andrew Deener’s fascinating book represents an important contribution to the sparsely populated field of social studies of food infrastructure. . . . The Problem with Feeding Cities represents an ambitious attempt to unpack the black box of fresh food provisioning in the United States and theorize the role of food infrastructure in shaping the contemporary city. . . .[It] reveals the importance of understanding what stands between the proverbial farm and table in terms of crafting policies and theories that can adequately confront the 'problem with feeding cities.'" * Gastronomica *“Most of us give little thought to the question of how our food gets to the grocery store, or of how and why this matters. But Deener has spent years investigating the hidden infrastructure that shapes what we grow, what we eat, what we spend, and, most surprisingly, how we’ve built cities, suburbs, and transit networks around the world. The Problem with Feeding Cities is a revelatory study, loaded with ideas about how to create healthier, more sustainable systems for our changing world.” -- Eric Klinenberg, author of Palaces for the People and Heat Wave“This is the food chain fully traced and newly understood. We learn how grocery companies, road builders, and bar codes have shaped cities and fields—and what goes in our mouths. Deener combines politics, technology, and taste for lessons in urban history, consumption, and the wiles and woes of business. He brings the concept of infrastructure to explanatory life.” -- Harvey Molotch, author of Where Stuff Comes From“The Problem with Feeding Cities is a masterpiece of sociological imagination, making the familiar grocery store aisle into a strange concoction of methyl bromide and Universal Product Codes. Deener narrates the ‘social life of infrastructure’ over a century of history and with a remarkable variety of foodstuff examples. This book is a model of urban, economic, organizational, and environmental sociology.” -- Mary Pattillo, author of Black on the Block"What is singularly insightful about this volume is that it disaggregates the food system, showing how supplying cities with grains or meats, about which much has been written...is quite different from feeding cities fresh fruits and vegetables...[Deener] underlines the epistemic consequences of separating rural sociology from urban sociology and a sociology of production from a sociology of consumption, with the ties between the two falling out of analytical view. That sets his task for the rest of the book, which includes exemplary chapters on technologies and techniques of classifying uneven organic material." * City & Community *"Sociologists with interests in food, urban studies, and politics will find The Problem with Feeding Cities to be a helpful resource for many years to come. Any evolution of our food distribution system that expands beyond today’s supermarket model (e.g., home delivery) will require new infrastructure to succeed. Deener’s framing of the problem of getting food to people will help us keep track of the ways industry and government mutually adapt to stock the household pantries of the future." * American Journal of Sociology *Table of ContentsPreface One / The Transformation of the Food System Two / The Rise and Fall of the Urban Middlemen Three / Infrastructural Exclusion Four / The Bar Code: A Micro-technical Force of Change Five / Defeating Seasons: Reassembling the Produce Aisle Six / Cracks in the System Seven / Food Distribution as Unfinished Infrastructure Eight / The Problem with Feeding Cities Acknowledgments Methods Appendix: Strategic Variation and Historical Excavation Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThe Nature of the Future plumbs the innovative, far-ranging, and sometimes downright strange agricultural schemes of nineteenth-century farms in the northern US. The nostalgic mist surrounding farms can make it hard to write their history, encrusting them with stereotypical rural virtues and unrealistically separating them from markets, capitalism, and urban influences. The Nature of the Future dispels this mist, focusing on a place and period of enormous agricultural vitalityantebellum New York Stateto examine the largest, most diverse, and most active scientific community in nineteenth-century America. Emily Pawley shows how improving farmers practiced a science where conflicting visions of the future landscape appeared and evaporated in quick succession. Drawing from US history, environmental history, and the history of science, and extensively mining a wealth of antebellum agricultural publications, The Nature of the Future reveals how improvers transformed American landscapes aTrade ReviewWinner * History of Science Society 2021 Philip Pauly Prize *"Pawley has written a powerful book that should shatter popular myths that portray antebellum rural New York as a “virtuous, sentimental, unchanging” bastion of the family farm. . . . This is an important story that should be foundational reading for anyone interested in the roots of our modern food system. . . . Scholars of capitalism and the environment will find much to mine in Pawley’s book." * Environmental History *"Readers will discover an important idea and a fascinating detail on every page of this remarkable book." * Business History Review *"An important work, deeply researched, strikingly incisive, and stunningly original. . . . Pawley adds depth and nuance to our understanding of antebellum culture and society. . . . And because Pawley approaches her subject matter with both a discerning eye and a sense of delight, her prose, for all its erudition, is laced with charm and wit. . . . If The Nature of the Future whets our intellectual appetites for more, it is because Pawley’s scholarship has yielded a bumper crop of food for thought. Dig in." * Agricultural History *"Provocative and engaging. . . This concise and elegantly written monograph makes an excellent contribution to the social, cultural, and economic historiography of New England as well as antebellum America more broadly." * New England Quarterly *“The Nature of the Future is a crisply written and lively account of agricultural improvement in the antebellum Northeast. Come for the mammoth squashes, drunken plants, and butter battles; stay for the incisive and illuminating history, brilliantly told.” -- Wendy A. Woloson, author of Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America“In this book, Pawley deftly hands us invention, experimentation, evidence, truth . . . and mulberries. In nineteenth-century bookkeeping of field nutrients, raucous debates over apple varieties, and Thoreau’s sarcasm, she discovers the science, economics, and commercial imagination that shaped American farming and our modern meals. The writing is a delight—insightful, sure, and often funny. The Nature of the Future will be of keen interest to historians of capitalism, place, and food—and to anyone helping chart our environmental present.” -- Conevery Bolton Valencius, author of The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes“Pawley shatters historians’ preconceptions about who and what belong in the histories of science and capitalism. Even the animals, plants, and soils have captivating pasts. Vivid and witty, this book rewrites the history of the early US from the perspective of those who fed it.” -- Jessica M. Lepler, author of The Many Panics of 1837Table of ContentsIntroduction: Bending Reality with Large Strawberries Part 1 Performances 1 Capitalist Aristocracy 2 No Ordinary Farmers Part 2 Experiments 3 Experiments All for Worldly Gain 4 Trying Machines Part 3 Futures 5 Coining Foliage into Gold 6 Divining Adaptation Part 4 Values 7 Truth in Fruit 8 The Balance-Sheet of Nature Epilogue Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Notes Index

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Book SynopsisAn essential guide to the role of microeconomic incentives, macro policies, and technological change in enhancing agriculture resilience. Climate change and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have exposed the vulnerability of global agricultural supply and value chains. There is a growing awareness of the importance of interactions within and between these supply chains for understanding the performance of agricultural markets. This book presents a collection of research studies that develop conceptual models and empirical analyses of risk resilience and vulnerability in supply chains. The chapters emphasize the roles played by microeconomic incentives, macroeconomic policies, and technological change in contributing to supply chain performance. The studies range widely, considering for example how agent-based modeling and remote sensing data can be used to assess the impact of shocks, and how recent shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the African Swine fever in China affected agricuTable of ContentsPreface Introduction Pol Antràs and David Zilberman 1. Symbiotic, Resilient, and Rapidly Transforming Food Supply Chains in LMICs: Supermarket and E-commerce Revolutions Helped by Wholesale and Logistics Co-pivoting Thomas Reardon and David Zilberman 2. Global Agricultural Value Chains and Structural Transformation Sunghun Lim 3. Exchange Rate Volatility and Global Food Supply Chains Sandro Steinbach 4. Fertilizer and Algal Blooms: A Satellite Approach to Assessing Water Quality Charles A. Taylor and Geoffrey Heal 5. Demand Shocks and Supply Chain Resilience: An Agent-Based Modeling Approach and Application to the Potato Supply Chain Liang Lu, Ruby Nguyen, Md Mamunur Rahman, and Jason Winfree 6. The Performance and Future of Ag Supply Chains A. G. Kawamura 7. Exploring Spatial Price Relationships: The Case of African Swine Fever in China Michael Delgado, Meilin Ma, and H. Holly Wang 8. Concentration and Resilience in the US Meat Supply Chains Meilin Ma and Jayson L. Lusk 9. Labor Dynamics and Supply Chain Disruption in Food Manufacturing A. Ford Ramsey, Barry K. Goodwin, and Mildred M. Haley 10. Has Global Agricultural Trade Been Resilient under COVID-19? Findings from an Econometric Assessment of 2020 Shawn Arita, Jason Grant, Sharon Sydow, and Jayson Beckman Contributors Author Index Subject Index

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Book SynopsisCommunity-based forest management (CBFM) is a model of forest management in which a community takes part in decision making. This volume looks at communities in China, Zanzibar, Brazil, and India where, despite differences in landscape, common challenges and themes arise in making a transition from forest management by government agencies to CBFM.Trade ReviewThis book makes for compelling reading and will be useful to ecologists and other scientists through to anthropologists and political scientists. -- Peter Thomas British Ecological Society Bulletin This excellent volume should be required reading for everyone working in forest conservation or resource management. -- Alaka Wali The Quarterly Review of Biology Well-written, thoughtful... [An] authoritative volume. -- Marianne Schmink Human EcologyTable of ContentsAcknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. Naidu Village, Yunnan Province, China 3. Jozani Forest, Ngezi Forest, and Misali Island, Zanzibar 4. The Varzea Forests of Mazagao, Amapa State, Brazil 5. Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh, India 6. The Community Narrative of Forest Loss and Degradation 7. Invoking the Community 8. The Capacity to Manage 9. Negotiating Partnerships: Whose Voice Is Loudest? 10. Governance and Empowerment 11. Conclusions Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisAmid America's sugar industry, a bitter debate over imperialism and immigrationTrade ReviewWinner of the Richard L. Wentworth/Illinois Award in American History, 2010. "A compelling account of the deeply interconnected worlds created by the emergence of a new cash crop."--American Historical Review“Mapes has uncovered patterns of global trade and labor markets that have had a profound impact on American society from the turn of the twentieth century up to the present day.”--Michigan Historical Review "A very nuanced yet powerful examination of the triumph of industrialism over agricultural America."--The Annals of Iowa“Mapes tells the understudied sugar beet industry’s fascinating story, and links events in Michigan between 1899 and 1940 to the broader national and global considerations. . . . Recommended.”--Choice"A fascinating work that provides important information about the history of agriculture and the construction of the term 'factories in the field' and its connections with the American empire. This book should become a mainstay among works in ethnic studies, agricultural labor, corporate power, and the state."--Gilbert G. Gonzalez, author of Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants, 1880-1930"Fascinating and beautifully crafted, Sweet Tyranny places growers, workers, and processors at the center of national debates over immigration, imperialism, protectionism, child labor, and a living wage."--Cindy Hahamovitch, author of The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Shackel brings the tools of archaeology, ethnography, and history to bear on an important moment in U.S. labor history, to disclose how immigration, labor strife and racial-ethnic discrimination were and continue to be at play, a long-term perspective informative for addressing these timely issues today."--Robert Paynter, coeditor of Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender"Shackel's contribution provides a deeply researched discussion about an often-neglected event in labor history." --International Journal of Heritage Studies"This important and timely book uncovers the forgotten history of the Lattimer Strike and massacre, its impact on the history and development of organized labor in the United States, and the enduring legacies of racial and class tensions these events have for the present. The story of the xenophobic exploitation of immigrants and their subsequent central role in the struggle for better working conditions and wages is used to offer a thoughtful and considered intervention into contemporary polarizing debates about immigration and migrant labor. Remembering Lattimer is a statement about the implications of the choices communities and nations alike make to collectively remember and forget, and the importance of breaking long held silences for the insight the past may offer for present and future aspirations for social justice."--Laurajane Smith, coauthor of Heritage, Communities, and Archaeology

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Book SynopsisAmid America's sugar industry, a bitter debate over imperialism and immigrationTrade ReviewWinner of the Richard L. Wentworth/Illinois Award in American History, 2010. "A compelling account of the deeply interconnected worlds created by the emergence of a new cash crop."--American Historical Review“Mapes has uncovered patterns of global trade and labor markets that have had a profound impact on American society from the turn of the twentieth century up to the present day.”--Michigan Historical Review "A very nuanced yet powerful examination of the triumph of industrialism over agricultural America."--The Annals of Iowa“Mapes tells the understudied sugar beet industry’s fascinating story, and links events in Michigan between 1899 and 1940 to the broader national and global considerations. . . . Recommended.”--Choice"A fascinating work that provides important information about the history of agriculture and the construction of the term 'factories in the field' and its connections with the American empire. This book should become a mainstay among works in ethnic studies, agricultural labor, corporate power, and the state."--Gilbert G. Gonzalez, author of Culture of Empire: American Writers, Mexico, and Mexican Immigrants, 1880-1930"Fascinating and beautifully crafted, Sweet Tyranny places growers, workers, and processors at the center of national debates over immigration, imperialism, protectionism, child labor, and a living wage."--Cindy Hahamovitch, author of The Fruits of Their Labor: Atlantic Coast Farmworkers and the Making of Migrant Poverty, 1870-1945

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Book SynopsisOn September 10, 1897, a group of 400 striking coal miners--workers of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian descent or origin--marched on Lattimer, Pennsylvania. There, law enforcement officers fired without warning into the protesters, killing nineteen miners and wounding thirty-eight others. The bloody day quickly faded into history. Paul A. Shackel confronts the legacies and lessons of the Lattimer event. Beginning with a dramatic retelling of the incident, Shackel traces how the violence, and the acquittal of the deputies who perpetrated it, spurred membership in the United Mine Workers. By blending archival and archaeological research with interviews, he weighs how the people living in the region remember--and forget--what happened. Now in positions of power, the descendants of the slain miners have themselves become rabidly anti-union and anti-immigrant as Dominicans and other Latinos change the community. Shackel shows how the social, economic, and political circumstances surrounding Trade Review"Shackel brings the tools of archaeology, ethnography, and history to bear on an important moment in U.S. labor history, to disclose how immigration, labor strife and racial-ethnic discrimination were and continue to be at play, a long-term perspective informative for addressing these timely issues today."--Robert Paynter, coeditor of Lines That Divide: Historical Archaeologies of Race, Class, and Gender "Shackel's contribution provides a deeply researched discussion about an often-neglected event in labor history." --International Journal of Heritage Studies "This important and timely book uncovers the forgotten history of the Lattimer Strike and massacre, its impact on the history and development of organized labor in the United States, and the enduring legacies of racial and class tensions these events have for the present. The story of the xenophobic exploitation of immigrants and their subsequent central role in the struggle for better working conditions and wages is used to offer a thoughtful and considered intervention into contemporary polarizing debates about immigration and migrant labor. Remembering Lattimer is a statement about the implications of the choices communities and nations alike make to collectively remember and forget, and the importance of breaking long held silences for the insight the past may offer for present and future aspirations for social justice."--Laurajane Smith, coauthor of Heritage, Communities, and ArchaeologyTable of ContentsCoverTitleCopyrightContentsPrefaceIntroductionChapter 1: Anthracite MiningChapter 2: The Lattimer Strike/Incident/MassacreChapter 3: A Great Miscarriage of Justice and the Growth of the UMWAChapter 4: Memory of LattimerChapter 5: The 1997 Centennial Commemoration and the Memory of LattimerChapter 6: Deindustrialization and the New Twenty-First-Century ImmigrantChapter 7: Turning the CornerReferencesIndex

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Book SynopsisPuer tea has been grown for centuries in the "Six Great Tea Mountains" of Yunnan Province. In imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the so-called Tea Horse Road and presented as tribute to the emperor in Beijing.Trade Review"An admirably coherent analysis of the complex social relationships that shaped the Pu'er market. . . . and a fine addition to the literature on the cultural biographies of commodities. . . . Recommended for the teaching of political economy, cultural economy, Chinese social transformation, and regional development studies." * China Quarterly *"A wealth of valuable information, both historical and anecdotal….should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the subject of Puer tea." * Two Dog Tea Blog *"This fine book has so much to tell us about the political economy of Puer tea over different periods of time and with links to Hong Kong, Taiwan and beyond…[I]nformative and well-written." -- Tan Chee Beng * Australian Journal of Anthropology *"[R]eflective of the deep socioeconomic and historical constructions of value in Puer tea shaped across many centuries, which Zhang captures in this intriguing monograph. Tracing the popularization of Puer tea in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, from its rise, peak, and eventual crash in 2007, this book is an insightful examination of the world of Puer tea. . . . [T]his ethnography presents a unique contribution to those interested in commodities, exchange, authenticity, and symbolic value. . . . The strength of this book lies in is rich ethnographic detail, in terms of privileging (and problematizing) the voices of the many actors involved in Puer tea, in addition to providing rich visual material to illuminate the complicated processes of producing, cultivating, and marketing Puer tea." -- Willa Zhen * Food, Culture and Society *Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments Transliteration, Names, and Measures Maps Introduction Spring 1. “The Authentic Tea Mountain Yiwu” 2. Tensions under the Bloom Summer 3. “Yunnan: The Home of Puer Tea” 81 4. Heating Up and Cooling Down 106 Autumn 5. Puer Tea with Remorse 6. Transformed Qualities Winter 7. Tea Tasting and Counter–Tea Tasting 8. Interactive Authenticities Conclusion: An Alternative Authenticity Appendix 1: Puer Tea Categories and Production Process Appendix 2: Supplementary Videos Notes Glossary References Index

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Book SynopsisPuer tea has been grown for centuries in the "Six Great Tea Mountains" of Yunnan Province. In imperial China it was a prized commodity, traded to Tibet by horse or mule caravan via the so-called Tea Horse Road and presented as tribute to the emperor in Beijing.Trade Review"An admirably coherent analysis of the complex social relationships that shaped the Pu'er market. . . . and a fine addition to the literature on the cultural biographies of commodities. . . . Recommended for the teaching of political economy, cultural economy, Chinese social transformation, and regional development studies." * China Quarterly *"A wealth of valuable information, both historical and anecdotal….should be mandatory reading for anyone interested in the subject of Puer tea." * Two Dog Tea Blog *"This fine book has so much to tell us about the political economy of Puer tea over different periods of time and with links to Hong Kong, Taiwan and beyond…[I]nformative and well-written." -- Tan Chee Beng * Australian Journal of Anthropology *"[R]eflective of the deep socioeconomic and historical constructions of value in Puer tea shaped across many centuries, which Zhang captures in this intriguing monograph. Tracing the popularization of Puer tea in the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries, from its rise, peak, and eventual crash in 2007, this book is an insightful examination of the world of Puer tea. . . . [T]his ethnography presents a unique contribution to those interested in commodities, exchange, authenticity, and symbolic value. . . . The strength of this book lies in is rich ethnographic detail, in terms of privileging (and problematizing) the voices of the many actors involved in Puer tea, in addition to providing rich visual material to illuminate the complicated processes of producing, cultivating, and marketing Puer tea." -- Willa Zhen * Food, Culture and Society *Table of ContentsForeword Acknowledgments Transliteration, Names, and Measures Maps Introduction Spring 1. “The Authentic Tea Mountain Yiwu” 2. Tensions under the Bloom Summer 3. “Yunnan: The Home of Puer Tea” 81 4. Heating Up and Cooling Down 106 Autumn 5. Puer Tea with Remorse 6. Transformed Qualities Winter 7. Tea Tasting and Counter–Tea Tasting 8. Interactive Authenticities Conclusion: An Alternative Authenticity Appendix 1: Puer Tea Categories and Production Process Appendix 2: Supplementary Videos Notes Glossary References Index

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Book SynopsisWorking on an Alaskan fishing schooner, the author learned to bait thousands of longline hooks, handle the daily halibut catch, respect the ocean's raw power and navigate the seedy bars and guilty pleasures of shore leave in Kodiak. This book tells an absorbing adventure story of maritime Alaska.Trade Review"This is pure adventure. Dean's story is…sinewy and spare, understated and often gorgeously written." -- Ethan Gilsdorf * Boston Globe *"Four Thousand Hooks is a marvellous loss-of-innocence book, informative, enjoyable and well worth reading." -- Irene Wanner * Seattle Times *"Four Thousand Hooks has the feel of an honest memoir, valuable for its precision in describing fishing methods, crew interactions, and what Adams thought and felt . . ." -- Scott Bowlen * Ketchikan Daily News *"His first-hand accounts come alive on the pages, where the reader is swept into the story with the narrator. . . . The foreshadowing and timing of the story makes it difficult to stop . . ." -- Christy Olsen Field * Norwegian American Weekly *"Four Thousand Hooks says a lot about our ability to meet extraordinary challenges, and suggests that maybe we're all stronger and more capable than we realize. [It’s] filled with fascinating details of the fishing life, makes for awfully good reading." -- National Fisherman * October 15 *“The well-honed prose tells a good story and one is encouraged to turn the pages to see what happens next. This is not only a very readable book but an important record of a particular type of fishing. -- Arthur G. Credland * Mariners Mirror *"Four Thousand Hooks is one teenage boy's dramatic, yet humorous, coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Alaskan maritime culture . . . a vivid picture of life and commercial fishing conditions in Alaska. . ." -- Jennifer Huffman * Independent Publisher *"Four Thousand Hooks [is] one of the best books about commercial fishing in Alaska. The author began long-lining for halibut at age fifteen and went on to captain his own vessel: it is a great book for anyone interested in life on a commercial fishing vessel." -- Charlotte Glover * Southeast Sea Kayaks Blog *

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Book SynopsisThe author's thesis declares that the obstacles to African agrarian development never stay the same. She explores the complex way in which African economy and society are tied to issues of land and labour, and offers comparative studies of agrarian change in four sub-Saharan areas.

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Book Synopsis'Smart Alliance' tells the story of how Chiquita, formerly the notorious United Fruit Company, reinvented itself as an ally of conservation and together with the Rainforest Alliance set about establishing a 'Better Banana' seal of approval to certify genuine efforts to protect the environment.Trade Review"One of the fairest treatments of environmental and trade issues yet written. Since the Rio conference (1992), we have been challenged to see the synergies between economics and environmental protection, and this study is among the best." Jonathan Plaut, Science, Technology, and Society Program, The Pennsylvania State University, and former chair, NAFTA CECF"

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of the rise of the crop strain that came to dominate the American tobacco industry and its toll on the Southern landscape that produced itTrade Review“How did such a valuable crop thrive on land so poor? Why did the earth melt from under the fortunes of planters? Drew Swanson gives answers in a history of bright leaf that is also about the fate of a southern region, a plant and its environment, and the rise of the cigarette.”—Steven Stoll, author of Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth Century America -- Steven Stoll“This book is a history of tobacco agriculture that will add to recent scholarship on the environmental history of staple crop plantations in the U.S. South; it is a significant contribution to this effort to re-write the agricultural history of the South in environmental terms.”—Mart A. Stewart, author of “What Nature Suffers to Groe” -- Mart A. Stewart“A Golden Weed is agrarian history at its best. Avoiding convenient stereotypes, Swanson vividly demonstrates how bright-leaf tobacco farmers transformed the social relations and soils of the Piedmont South.”—Edward D. Melillo, Amherst College -- Edward D. Melillo“Swanson’s finely grained appraisal of bright tobacco culture revises familiar accounts of commodity-crop agriculture, weaving a compelling narrative of economics, race relations, and the land in the Virginia-North Carolina Southside.”—Sara M. Gregg, author of Managing the Mountains -- Sara M. Gregg“With his sure grasp of cultivation and deep insight into the social and ecological realities of growing bright-leaf tobacco, Swanson depicts a region degraded and impoverished not from simple ignorance or greed, but from a tragic inability to overcome economic and racial obstacles.”—Brian Donahue, co-editor of American Georgics: Writings on Farming, Culture, and the Land and author of The Great Meadow: Farmers and the Land in Colonial Concord -- Brian DonahueWon the Ohio Academy of History, for the junior faculty, 2015 Publication Award which is given “to an active member of the Academy” for an “outstanding publication in the field of history issued in the year preceding the annual meeting.” -- Publication Award * Ohio Academy of History *Winner of the 2015 Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award from the Agricultural History Society for the year's best book on agricultural hisotry -- Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award * Agricultural History Society *“…Drew Swanson’s A Golden Weed is [a] well-researched study of tobacco in the Old Bright Belt…Swanson examines tobacco’s environmental history and deep-rooted connections to the region’s culture.”—Dale Coats, NCHR -- Dale Coats * NCHR *"A Golden Weed is thus both a cultural and an environmental history; Swanson is interested in ideas about land but also in the ways that the natural environment..."—Megan Kate Nelson, The Journal of American History -- Megan Kate Nelson * Journal of American History *“Swanson excels in delivering what his title promised: a rigorous exploration of why generations of farmer’s sacrificed the integrity of the landscape they loved to grow soil-depleting tobacco. His persuasive arguments about this key issue now make it essential for future historians of southern agriculture”—Adrienne Monteith Petty, American Historical Review -- Adrienne Monteith Petty * American Historical Review *Selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2015, in the botany category. -- Outstanding Academic Title * Choice *

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Book SynopsisTable of Contents1. Sedimentary and tectonic development of the Ordos Basin and its hydrocarbon potential Section A Relationships between tectonics, sedimentology, diagenesis, and hydrocarbon reservoirs 2. The collision between the North China Block and the South China Block, and the resulting event beds in the Triassic Yanchang Formation (southern Ordos Basin, China) 3. Origin and evolution of dolomite reservoirs in the Ordovician Majiagou Formation, Central and Eastern Ordos Basin, NW China 4. Depositional model and diagenetic evolution of hydrocarbon reservoirs in deep dolomites of the Ordos Basin, China 5. Facies shifts in the Ordos Basin (China) along the southern and western margins of the North China Plate as a result of plate tectonics 6. Evolution during the Permian from a marine to a continental setting, south-eastern Ordos Basin, China 7. Hydrocarbon accumulations in the Permian Shanxi Formation (Ordos Basin, China) as controlled by sedimentary heterogeneities 8. Subsidence of the Mesozoic Ordos Basin and resulting migration of depocenters Section B The role of diagenesis in gas fields 9. Chlorite coatings of quartz grains and the implications for Permian gas reservoirs in the Ordos Basin (China) 10. Gas geochemistry indicates Ordovician marine micrites as the main source rock of natural gas in a weathered limestone reservoir (Jingbian Gas Field, Ordos Basin, China) 11. The influence of diagenesis on low-porosity, low-permeability gas reservoirs in the Sulige Gas Field (Ordos Basin, China) 12. Diagenetically induced heterogeneity of tight gas reservoirs near Zizhou (Ordos Basin, eastern China) Section C Understanding facies problems 13. Facies distribution in the Ordovician Pingliang Formation (southern Ordos Basin, China) and the role of turbidity currents 14. When turbidity currents cross contour currents: a struggle for life in the Ordovician along the southern margin of the Ordos Basin (China) 15. Predicting the spatial distribution of sandy mass-flow deposits in deep basins by analysis of mud-coated structures Section D Focus on the Yanchang Formation 16. Lacustrine sequence stratigraphy: New insights from the study of the Yanchang Formation (Middle-Late Triassic), Ordos Basin, China 17. The origin of hyperpycnites in the Middle-Late Triassic Yanchang Fm. (Ordos Basin, China) and their significance for the formation of unconventional hydrocarbons 18. Influence of diagenesis on reservoir properties of the Chang 2 Oil Member of the Yanchang Formation in the Zhidan Oil Field (Ordos Basin, China) 19. Slurry deposits in cores from the Middle-Late Triassic Yanchang Formation (Ordos Basin, China) 20. Late Triassic tectono-volcanic activity and resulting soft-sediment deformation structures in the Yanchang Formation (Ordos Basin, China) 21. Middle-Late Triassic muddy gravity-flow deposits in the Ordos Basin (China) 22. Debrite/turbidite transitions in the Chang 6 Oil Member of the Yanchang Formation (Ordos Basin, China) 23. Reservoir quality of the Middle-Late Triassic Yanchang Formation (Ordos Basin) as controlled by sedimentology and diagenesis 24. The significance for unconventional petroleum exploration of a good classification system for gravity-flow deposits, with examples from the Yanchang Formation 25. Quality of tight sandstone reservoirs in gravity-flow deposits of the deep-lacustrine Yanchang Formation (Ordos Basin, China) as controlled by diagenesis

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