International Law and Agroecological Husbandry

Check out this new book from John Head, Robert W. Wagstaff Distinguished Professor of Law at KU, has written “International Law and Agroecological Husbandry: Building Legal Foundations for a New Agriculture.” The book first outlines the “extractive agriculture” system the modern world has used for the last few centuries and its unsustainability. Head then explores […]

Do We Have a Global Eating Disorder?

Read the recent review by Grace Gershuny) about Gunnar Rundgren’s book ‘Global Eating Disorder’ that discusses how we move toward diverse, locally appropriate systems that create equity and the health of people and the environment. http://www.agdevjournal.com/current-issue/652-global-eating-disorder-review.html?catid=228%3Areviews.  She describes how Rundgren takes the reader through “a metaphorical menu that encompasses the ecological and economic dimensions of each […]

A few summer reading suggestions

ASAP’s summer reading list: Grace Gershuny’s, Organic Revolutionary: A Memoir of the Movement for Real Food, Planetary Healing, and Human Liberation, reviews origins of the U.S. organic standard through the author’s eyes beginning with the 1970s back-to-the-land movement, appreciation of the soul of the soil and the organic farming movement in northern New England.   Grace […]

Annotated Bibliography on Structural Racism in the Food System

In late May 2015, MSU Center for Regional Food Systems published a new annotated bibliography, Structural racism present in the U.S. Food System The resource provides useful background reading to advocates, scholars, and anyone else working to bring about a more sustainable and just food system in the United States. We received a number of comments and suggestions […]

Eating Animals Review

Next Tuesday at 12:35pm, Jonathan Safran Foer will be doing a “virtual visit” to the Illini Union, in room 404, giving us a chance to ask him questions about his book Eating Animals, a heavy piece of nonfiction. I call it heavy not because its prose is dense (it’s quite pleasant to read) or because it is […]

New “Food for Thought”

The University of Illinois College of ACES recently released the second installment of its publication “Food for Thought.” The magazine focuses on the research conducted and solutions found by the scientists within the college. It can be read and/or downloaded here. The first issue (published in 2012) can be found here.

“The New Horse-Powered Farm”

In central New York State, as well as all over the country, an unlikely revival is happening  in sustainably-minded agriculture; the return of work horses and draft mules on the American farm. A recent write-up in the New York Times entitled Farm Equipment That Runs on Oats featured a farm in Ghent, NY, run by a man […]

Literary Jamboree: Top-Bar Beekeeping

For those interested in amateur beekeeping, and really, who isn’t, comes a new book from Les Crowder and Heather Harrell, Top-Bar Beekeeping: Organic Practices for Honeybee Health. The book focuses, as the name might suggest, on the practice of top-bar beekeeping, a strategy which has become very popular with the beekeeping scene; so popular, in fact, […]