Books

this garden got its start with the reading i was doing in the spring and summer of 2008. i had just finished taking a physical anthropology course at indiana university northwest that was taught by dr. kathleen forgey. her enthusiasm for her subject matter opened up a number of new areas for me to think about and explore, human origins, evolution, and genetics among them. we also dealt with the origins of agriculture. as i recall it was a time of rising food prices and there were a number of food riots in mega-cities around the globe which put the topic of food and food production in the public eye. additionally i had been reading The Ominvore's Dilemma by michael pollan. as usual one book led to another. pollan quoted freely from works by wendell berry and so my next read was his book The Unsettling of America. wendell made some excellent points about the unsustainability of industrial agriculture, but his outlook was a bit too utopian for my taste, so i looked around for more material. there is a suprising ammount of it and my reading list burgeoned. The Story of Corn by betty fussel, Food Politics by marion nestle, Guns, Germs, and Steel by jared diamond, Farmer's Bounty by steven brush, Eating the Sun by oliver morton, An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds by jonathan silvertown ( thanks rachel!), Movable Feasts by sarah murray, Against the Grain by richard manning, The Soil and Health by sir albert howard, and The End of Food by paul roberts. this last book touched on the formation of mega slums through environmental degerdation and the destruction of traditional agriculture in the developing world because of imports of cheap subsidized food from the industrial world. this led me to Planet of Slums by mike davis which was an eye-opener about a multitude of issues. paul roberts' book also discussed the unsustainability of industrial agriculture as practiced in the united states because of its complete dependence on petrochemicals from producing fuels for machinery to the inputs for chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides ( all of which degrade the environment in myriad ways). this led to an investigation of resource depletion through, among others, richard heinberg's book Peak Everything. in the course of an email exchange with richard heinberg i mentioned an interest in agriculture and food production. he, in turn, suggested that i look into the work of wes jackson, so i read New Roots for Agriculture and aslo took a look at the website for his research group The Land Institute http://www.landinstitute.org/vnews/display.v their work in developing perennial cereal grains had a direrct impact on the perennial garden ( as did the input of dr. forgey who has been unstinting in her support and enthusiasm). the garden was not an impulsive idea. its gestation has been rooted in reading and a good deal of thought about how we came to where we find ourselves and what can be done to change the way we think about food and food production. we have some ideas about what we're looking for and surely more will suggest themselves as we go along. we will share what we learn.