Download Free Amber Waves Of Grain Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Amber Waves Of Grain and write the review.

A biography of a staple grain we often take for granted, exploring how wheat went from wild grass to a world-shaping crop. At breakfast tables and bakeries, we take for granted a grain that has made human civilization possible, a cereal whose humble origins belie its world-shaping power: wheat. Amber Waves tells the story of a group of grass species that first grew in scattered stands in the foothills of the Middle East until our ancestors discovered their value as a source of food. Over thousands of years, we moved their seeds to all but the polar regions of Earth, slowly cultivating what we now know as wheat, and in the process creating a world of cuisines that uses wheat seeds as a staple food. Wheat spread across the globe, but as ecologist Catherine Zabinski shows us, a biography of wheat is not only the story of how plants ensure their own success: from the earliest bread to the most mouthwatering pasta, it is also a story of human ingenuity in producing enough food for ourselves and our communities. Since the first harvest of the ancient grain, we have perfected our farming systems to grow massive quantities of food, producing one of our species’ global mega crops—but at a great cost to ecological systems. And despite our vast capacity to grow food, we face problems with undernourishment both close to home and around the world. Weaving together history, evolution, and ecology, Zabinski’s tale explores much more than the wild roots and rise of a now-ubiquitous grain: it illuminates our complex relationship with our crops, both how we have transformed the plant species we use as food, and how our society—our culture—has changed in response to the need to secure food sources. From the origins of agriculture to gluten sensitivities, from our first selection of the largest seeds from wheat’s wild progenitors to the sequencing of the wheat genome and genetic engineering, Amber Waves sheds new light on how we grow the food that sustains so much human life.
An edition of the nineteenth-century poem that was later set to music, illustrated by a noted American artist.
A visual history of MInnesota beers and breweries traces the evolution of the state's beer industry, from the 1849 construction of the first brewery to the growth of small-town enterprises that gave way to large companies of regional and national prominence, offering a comprehensive list of Minnesota breweries as well as more than three hundred illustrations of beer and breweriana.
This book explores the large-scale impacts of economic restructuring in the Midwest in response to the 1980s farm crisis. Drawing upon detailed surveys from twelve north-central states, the authors offer a comprehensive view of farm restructuring and its social, economic, and political consequences. The study goes beyond the farm gate to look at the broader implications of those changes for agriculture policy, related industries, and areas still dependent upon farming, contributing to the literature on economic restructuring. Like the factory closings in the Rust Belt, the dramatic failure of agricultural industries in the Farm Belt has caused fundamental changes in the organization and control of production. The impact of job losses and economic depression and the shattering of a way of life have shaken public complacency about the stability of many fundamental American myths. Beyond the Amber Waves of Grain looks at the farm crisis not as a purely agricultural, nonurban issue but as one that adds to our understanding of the overall social impacts of economic change. The book takes up the story of Midwestern farm enterprises in the wake of the farm crisis of the 1980s. Using data drawn from detailed surveys of 3,940 farm households in twelve north-central states, the authors offer a comprehensive view of the social and economic restructuring of agriculture and explore the consequences for farm enterprises, farm households, and farming communities. The study goes beyond the farm gate to look at the broader implications for related industries and communities dependent upon farming, for agricultural and rural policies, and for farm women and men, contributing to the literature on economic restructuring and its outcomes.
For more than 10,000 years, grains have been the staples of Western civilization. The stored energy of grain allowed our ancestors to shift from nomadic hunting and gathering and build settled communities—even great cities. Though most bread now comes from factory bakeries, the symbolism of wheat and bread—amber waves of grain, the staff of life—still carries great meaning. Today, bread and beer are once again building community as a new band of farmers, bakers, millers, and maltsters work to reinvent local grain systems. The New Bread Basket tells their stories and reveals the village that stands behind every loaf and every pint. While eating locally grown crops like heirloom tomatoes has become almost a cliché, grains are late in arriving to local tables, because growing them requires a lot of land and equipment. Milling, malting, and marketing take both tools and cooperation. The New Bread Basket reveals the bones of that cooperation, profiling the seed breeders, agronomists, and grassroots food activists who are collaborating with farmers, millers, bakers, and other local producers. Take Andrea and Christian Stanley, a couple who taught themselves the craft of malting and opened the first malthouse in New England in one hundred years. Outside Ithaca, New York, bread from a farmer-miller-baker partnership has become an emblem in the battle against shale gas fracking. And in the Pacific Northwest, people are shifting grain markets from commodity exports to regional feed, food, and alcohol production. Such pioneering grain projects give consumers an alternative to industrial bread and beer, and return their production to a scale that respects people, local communities, and the health of the environment. Many Americans today avoid gluten and carbohydrates. Yet, our shared history with grains—from the village baker to Wonder Bread—suggests that modern changes in farming and processing could be the real reason that grains have become suspect in popular nutrition. The people profiled in The New Bread Basket are returning to traditional methods like long sourdough fermentations that might address the dietary ills attributed to wheat. Their work and lives make our foundational crops visible, and vital, again.
A Mighty Girl's 2020 Books of the Year The true story of the unconventional woman and her enduring song about the spirit of America. Katharine Lee Bates first wrote the lines to "America the Beautiful" after a stirring visit to Pikes Peak in 1893. But the story behind the song begins with Katharine herself, who pushed beyond conventional expectations of women to become an acclaimed writer, scholar, suffragist, and reformer. Katharine believed in the power of words to make a difference, and in "America the Beautiful," her vision of the nation as a great family, united from sea to shining sea, continues to uplift and inspire us all.
America's farmlands captured in aerial photographs
An epic story of the American wheat harvest, the politics of food, and the culture of the Great Plains For over one hundred years, the Mockett family has owned a seven-thousand-acre wheat farm in the panhandle of Nebraska, where Marie Mutsuki Mockett’s father was raised. Mockett, who grew up in bohemian Carmel, California, with her father and her Japanese mother, knew little about farming when she inherited this land. Her father had all but forsworn it. In American Harvest, Mockett accompanies a group of evangelical Christian wheat harvesters through the heartland at the invitation of Eric Wolgemuth, the conservative farmer who has cut her family’s fields for decades. As Mockett follows Wolgemuth’s crew on the trail of ripening wheat from Texas to Idaho, they contemplate what Wolgemuth refers to as “the divide,” inadvertently peeling back layers of the American story to expose its contradictions and unhealed wounds. She joins the crew in the fields, attends church, and struggles to adapt to the rhythms of rural life, all the while continually reminded of her own status as a person who signals “not white,” but who people she encounters can’t quite categorize. American Harvest is an extraordinary evocation of the land and a thoughtful exploration of ingrained beliefs, from evangelical skepticism of evolution to cosmopolitan assumptions about food production and farming. With exquisite lyricism and humanity, this astonishing book attempts to reconcile competing versions of our national story.