{"product_id":"in-defense-of-farmers-9781496206732","title":"In Defense of Farmers","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cdiv\u003eIndustrial agriculture is generally characterized as either the salvation of a growing, hungry, global population or as socially and environmentally irresponsible. Despite elements of truth in this polarization, it fails to focus on the particular vulnerabilities and potentials of industrial agriculture. Both representations obscure individual farmers, their families, their communities, and the risks they face from unpredictable local, national, and global conditions: fluctuating and often volatile production costs and crop prices; extreme weather exacerbated by climate change; complicated and changing farm policies; new production technologies and practices; water availability; inflation and debt; and rural community decline. Yet the future of industrial agriculture depends fundamentally on farmers’ decisions.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Farmers\u003c\/i\u003e illuminates anew the critical role that farmers play in the future of agriculture and examines the social, economic, and envir\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Valuable for food system leaders and policy-makers and in graduate seminars. . . . [Analyses] highlight unsustainable methods and suggest improvements that could serve as a starting point for dialogues and decisions on changing the food system framework.”—Stacey F. Stearns, \u003ci\u003eJournal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Farmers\u003c\/i\u003e delivers a timely contribution to helping us better understand how we got to the corporate-hijacked food system we have today and how farm managers navigate this framework as they simultaneously promote and resist it. This edited volume is sharp in its critique while careful in its delivery, making it an important book for both scholars in the humanities and practitioners in the agricultural sciences. Through its successful disciplinary bridging, certainly contributing to its considerate tone, \u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Farmers\u003c\/i\u003e will prove a useful foundation for practical conversations about the future of food production.\"—Nicole Welk-Joerger, H-Environment\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Farmers\u003c\/i\u003e provides a solid overview of the current moment in industrialized agriculture and its human costs.\"—Megan Birk, \u003ci\u003eNew Mexico Historical Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Feeding the world’s population in a sustainable manner is a topic of critical importance for all humankind. Those of us living in the developed world need to be cognizant of the perils of the industrialized model of agricultural production and the consequences of its adoption around the world. . . . Farmers’ voices are rarely heard, but this book now allows them to be heard with respect to the challenges of groundwater depletion, ‘big chicken,’ climate change, or the consequences of adopting new precision farming technologies.”—Michael J. Broadway, professor of geography at Northern Michigan University and coauthor of \u003ci\u003eSlaughterhouse Blues: The Meat and Poultry Industry in North America\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eIn Defense of Farmers\u003c\/i\u003e is critical from the empirical standpoint of those disturbing processes that have taken us to a standardized place where too few corporate actors make too many decisions about what we eat, where we eat it, and who reaps food production’s benefits while others bear the costs of compromising animal welfare, the environment, and the quality of food. Gibson and Alexander have assembled an impressive, interdisciplinary volume of authors who know their subjects so well that their disgust at capital concentration, environmental destruction, and routine violations of human and animal rights is palpable.”—David Griffith, professor of anthropology at East Carolina University and author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Guestworkers: Jamaicans and Mexicans in the U.S. Labor Market\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eList of Illustrations\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eForeword by John K. Hansen\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAcknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: A Food System Imperiled\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJane W. Gibson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e1. Power, Food, and Agriculture: Implications for Farmers, Consumers, and Communities \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMary K. Hendrickson, Philip H. Howard, and Douglas H. Constance\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e2. Chickenizing American Farmers\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDonald D. Stull\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e3. Industrial Chicken Meat and the Good Life in Bolivia\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSarah Kollnig\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e4. Automating Agriculture: Precision Technologies, Agbots, and the Fourth Industrial Revolution\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJane W. Gibson\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e5. Water to Wine: Industrial Agriculture and Groundwater Regulation in California\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eCasey Walsh\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e6. Forecasting the Challenges of Climate Change for West Texas Wheat Farmers\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSara E. Alexander\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e7. From Partner to Consumer: The Changing Role of Farmers in the Public Agricultural Research Process on the Canadian Prairies\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eKatherine Strand\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e8. Transmission of the Brazil Model of Industrial Soybean Production: A Comparative Study of Two Migrant Farming Communities in the Brazilian Cerrado\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAndrew Ofstehage\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e9. The Price of Success: Population Decline and Community Transformation in Western Kansas\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJane W. Gibson and Benjamin J. Gray\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e10. An Alternative Future for Food and Farming\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJohn Ikerd\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eList of Contributors\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIndex  \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"University of Nebraska Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49409221198167,"sku":"9781496206732","price":37.5,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781496206732.jpg?v=1730506008","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/in-defense-of-farmers-9781496206732","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}