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"Eloquent and detailed...It's hard to have hope, but the organized observations and plans of Hoffman and people like her give me some. Read her book -- and listen." -- Jane Smiley, The Washington Post In her late 40s, Beth Hoffman decided to upend her comfortable life as a professor and journalist to move to her husband's family ranch in Iowa--all for the dream of becoming a farmer. There was just one problem: money. Half of America's two million farms made less than $300 in 2019, and many struggle just to stay afloat. Bet the Farm chronicles this struggle through Beth's eyes. She must contend with her father-in-law, who is reluctant to hand over control of the land. Growing oats is good for the environment but ends up being very bad for the wallet. And finding somewhere, in the midst of COVID-19, to slaughter grass finished beef is a nightmare. If Beth can't make it, how can farmers who confront racism, lack access to land, or don't have other jobs to fall back on hack it? Bet the Farm is a first-hand account of the perils of farming today and a personal exploration of more just and sustainable ways of producing food.
Japan Agricultural Cooperatives (JA), a nationwide network of farm cooperatives, is under increasing pressure to expand farmer incomes by adapting coop strategies to changing market incentives. Some coops have adapted more successfully than others. In Betting on the Farm, Patricia L. Maclachlan and Kay Shimizu attribute these differences to three sets of local variables: resource endowments and product-specific market conditions, coop leadership, and the organization of farmer-members behind new coop strategies. Using in-depth case studies and profiles of different types of farmers, Betting on the Farm also explores the evolution of the formal and informal institutional foundations of postwar agriculture; the electoral sources of JA's influence; the interactive effects of economic liberalization and demographic pressures (an aging farm population and acute shortage of farm successors) on the propensity for change within the farm sector; and the diversification of Japan's traditional farm households and the implications for farmer ties with JA.
At Clay Bottom Farm, author Ben Hartman and staff practice kaizen, or continuous improvement, cutting out more waste--of time, labor, space, money, and more--every year and aligning their organic production more tightly with customer demand. Applied alongside other lean principles originally developed by the Japanese auto industry, the end result has been increased profits and less work. In this field-guide companion to his award-winning first book, The Lean Farm, Hartman shows market vegetable growers in even more detail how Clay Bottom Farm implements lean thinking in every area of their work, including using kanbans, or replacement signals, to maximize land use; germination chambers to reduce defect waste; and right-sized machinery to save money and labor and increase efficiency. From finding land and assessing infrastructure needs to selling perfect produce at the farmers market, The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables digs deeper into specific, tested methods for waste-free farming that not only help farmers become more successful but make the work more enjoyable. These methods include: Using Japanese paper pot transplanters Building your own germinating chambers Leaning up your greenhouse Making and applying simple composts Using lean techniques for pest and weed control Creating Heijunka, or load-leveling calendars for efficient planning Farming is not static, and improvement requires constant change. The Lean Farm Guide to Growing Vegetables offers strategies for farmers to stay flexible and profitable even in the face of changing weather and markets. Much more than a simple exercise in cost-cutting, lean farming is about growing better, not cheaper, food--the food your customers want.
Regenerative Agriculture offers a clear and pragmatic approach to designing, installing and managing profitable small farms.
Insects and fungi have a shared history of association in common habitats where together they endure similar environmental conditions, but only recently have mycologists and entomologists recognized and had the techniques to study the intricacies of some of the associations. This new volume covers "seven wonders of the insect-fungus world" for which exciting new results have become available, often due to the use of new methods that include phylogenetic analysis and development of molecular markers. Eleven chapters of the volume are presented in two sections, "Fungi that act against insects" and "Fungi mutualistic with insects" that cover a number of major themes. Examples of necrotrophic parasites of insects are discussed, not only for biological control potential, but also as organisms with population structure and complex multipartite interactions; a beneficial role for symptomless endophytes in broad-leafed plants is proposed; biotrophic fungal parasites with reduced morphologies are placed among relatives using phylogenetic methods; complex methods of fungal spore dispersal include interactions with one or more arthropods; the farming behavior of New World attine ants is compared with that of humans and the Old World fungus-growing termites; certain mycophagous insects use fungi as a sole nutritional resource; and other insects obtain nutritional supplements from yeasts. Insects involved in fungal associations include--but are not limited to--members of the Coleoptera, Diptera, Homoptera, Hymenoptera, and Isoptera. The fungi involved in interactions with insects may be clustered taxonomically, as is the case for Ascomycetes in the Hypocreales (e.g., Beauveria, Metarhizium, Fusarium), ambrosia fungi in the genera ophiostoma and ceratocystis and their asexual relatives, Laboulbeniomycetes, Saccharomycetes, and the more basal Microsporidia. Other groups, however, have only occasional members (e.g., mushrooms cultivated by attine ants and termites) in such associations. The chapters included in this volume constitute a modern crash course in the study of insect-fungus associations.
The essays in this collection focus on the reasons for and background to the emergence during the 1980s of the new farmers' movements in India. In addition to a more general consideration of the economic, political and theoretical dimensions of this development, there are case studies which cover the farmer's movements in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka.