Search results for ""Author Paul Brassley""
Oxford University Press Agriculture: A Very Short Introduction
Agriculture, 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.
£9.67
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Real Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of English Farming, 1939-1985
An investigation into farming practices throughout a period of seismic change. WINNER of the British Agricultural History Society's 2022 Thirsk Prize WINNER of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award "This meticulously researched book gives a detailed and authoritative history of agricultural change in the second half of the twentieth century. The book skilfully weaves together the hitherto underexplored individual returns of the Farm Management Survey with oral histories of the farmers who enacted change on the ground to offer an incisive account of the complex technological, political and cultural developments which gave rise to some of the greatest changes in English farming history. It will stand as the key reference point for those with an interest in the history of agricultural change in Britain." Professor Mark Riley, University of Liverpool At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 British agriculture was largely powered by the muscles of men, women, and horses, and used mostly nineteenth-century technology to produce less than half of the country's temperate food. By 1985, less land and far fewer people were involved in farming, the power sources and technologies had been completely transformed, and the output of the country's agriculture had more than doubled. This is the story of the national farm, reflecting the efforts and experiences of 200,000 or so farmers and their families, together with the people they employed. But it is not the story of any individual one of them. We know too little about change at the individual farm level, although what happened varied considerably between farms and between different technologies. Based on an improbably-surviving archive of Farm Management Survey accounts, supported by oral histories from some of the farmers involved, this book explores the links between the production of new technologies, their transmission through knowledge networks, and their reception on individual farms. It contests the idea that rapid adoption of technology was inevitable, and reveals the unevenness, variability and complexity that lay beneath the smooth surface of the official statistics.
£80.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Real Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of English Farming, 1939-1985
An investigation into farming practices throughout a period of seismic change. WINNER of the British Agricultural History Society's 2022 Thirsk Prize WINNER of the 2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award "This meticulously researched book gives a detailed and authoritative history of agricultural change in the second half of the twentieth century. The book skilfully weaves together the hitherto underexplored individual returns of the Farm Management Survey with oral histories of the farmers who enacted change on the ground to offer an incisive account of the complex technological, political and cultural developments which gave rise to some of the greatest changes in English farming history. It will stand as the key reference point for those with an interest in the history of agricultural change in Britain." Professor Mark Riley, University of Liverpool At the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 British agriculture was largely powered by the muscles of men, women, and horses, and used mostly nineteenth-century technology to produce less than half of the country's temperate food. By 1985, less land and far fewer people were involved in farming, the power sources and technologies had been completely transformed, and the output of the country's agriculture had more than doubled. This is the story of the national farm, reflecting the efforts and experiences of 200,000 or so farmers and their families, together with the people they employed. But it is not the story of any individual one of them. We know too little about change at the individual farm level, although what happened varied considerably between farms and between different technologies. Based on an improbably-surviving archive of Farm Management Survey accounts, supported by oral histories from some of the farmers involved, this book explores the links between the production of new technologies, their transmission through knowledge networks, and their reception on individual farms. It contests the idea that rapid adoption of technology was inevitable, and reveals the unevenness, variability and complexity that lay beneath the smooth surface of the official statistics.
£25.99
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The English Countryside between the Wars: Regeneration or Decline?
A revisionist look at the true state of rural England between the two world wars. England is the country, and the country is England, as Stanley Baldwin famously said in 1924, but what kind of country was it? There are persistent memories of depression and depopulation, of dilapidated villages and deserted country houses, in a period of bitter discontent and disturbance when the brief febrile excitements of the 1920s gave way to the thirties, Auden's "low dishonest decade". Recent work has radically modified the history of the interwar years, but largely from an urban and industrial viewpoint. Hitherto this revisionist perspective has left unquestioned one of the central components of the old orthodoxy: that this was a period of unremitting, unmitigated decline in the countryside. In The English Countryside Between the Wars an interdisciplinary group of scholars have come together to challenge this view. Organised into sections on society, culture, politics and the economy,and embracing subjects as diverse as women novelists and village crafts, the book argues that almost everywhere we look in the countryside between the wars there were signs of new growth and dynamic development. This will be required reading for everyone with an interest in British history between the wars and to lecturers, teachers and students studying social, cultural, political, economic and environmental history, historical and cultural geography, English literature, performance studies and art and design history. Contributors: ALUN HOWKINS, CAITLIN ADAMS, MARION SHAW, MARK RAWLINSON, MICK WALLIS, DAVID JEREMIAH, CHRISTOPHER BAILEY, JOHN SHEAIL, CLARE GRIFFITHS, NICHOLAS MANSFIELD, ROY BRIGDEN
£80.00