Books
Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature and Community
Edited by Annette Aurélie Desmarais, Nettie Wiebe, Hannah Wittman
Advocating a practical, radical change to the way much of our food system currently operates, this book argues that food sovereignty is the means to achieving a system that will provide for the food needs of all people while respecting the principles of environmental sustainability, local empowerment and agrarian citizenship.
The No-Nonsense Guide to World Food
by Wayne Roberts
Food security is a topic that is increasingly in the public consciousness. Covering fast food, health food, institutional food, and more, this timely guideshows how “real food” has become increasingly scarce, dominated as it is in the West by agri-business and supermarkets. In the no-nonsense tone for which these guides are known, Wayne Roberts covers nutrition, health, economics and more. He also gives examples of effective food-ways being developed by individuals, communities, and governments.
Stuffed and Starved
by Raj Patel
This book provides a clear, hard-headed analysis of why and how half the world is stuffed and the other is starved. The author also publishes a blog
Pandemonium : Bird Flu, Mad Cow, and Other Biological Plagues of the 21stCentury
by Andrew Nikiforuk
A distinguished nineteenth-century pathologist once lamented that humanity’s greatest curse was that "it can learn to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation." In Pandemonium, renowned author Andrew Nikiforuk argues that the breaking point is imminent as our health and habitat are threatened by biological invaders moving at unprecedented speed. Avian flu and its potential to cause a human pandemic is only one example of a worldwide menace unwittingly unleashed by the forces of globalization.
Bird Flu: A Virus of our Own Hatching
by Michael Greger, MD
"In a sense, pandemics aren't born—they're made. H5N1 may be a virus of our own hatching coming home to roost. According to a spokesperson for the World Health Organization, "The bottom line is that humans have to think about how they treat their animals, how they farm them, and how they market them—basically the whole relationship between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom is coming under stress." Along with human culpability, though, comes hope. If changes in human behavior can cause new plagues, changes in human behavior may prevent them in the future."
The Omnivore's Dilemma
by Michael Pollan
In this book Pollan asks, "What should we have for dinner?" He takes the reader on a journey defined by four meals produced through four production systems: industrial, big organic, beyond organic and hunter-gatherer. Pollan's answers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. The Omnivore's Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating.
Livestock’s long shadow: Environmental issues and options
by H. Steinfeld, P. Gerber, T. Wassenaar, V. Castel, M. Rosales, C. de Haan - 2006, 390 pp
This report aims to assess the full impact of the livestock sector on environmental problems, along with potential technical and policy approaches to mitigation. The assessment is based on the most recent and complete data available, taking into account direct impacts, along with the impacts of feed crop agriculture required for livestock production.
The livestock sector emerges as one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global. The findings of this report suggest that it should be a major policy focus when dealing with problems of land degradation, climate change and air pollution, water shortage and water pollution, and loss of biodiversity.
Livestock’s contribution to environmental problems is on a massive scale and its potential contribution to their solution is equally large. The impact is so significant that it needs to be addressed with urgency. Major reductions in impact could be achieved at reasonable cost.
Beyond Factory Farming: Corporate Hog Barns and the Threat to Public Health, the Environment, and Rural Communities
Edited by Alexander M. Ervin, Cathy Holtslander, Darrin Qualman, and Rick Sawa Released November 7, 2003
This book examines at the changes that have resulted from industrialization of the hog sector and the effects that these changes have had on our family farms, the food we eat, our conditions of work, our communities, and the relationship of governments to corporations and citizens. Through diverse perspectives, this book highlights, not just the Canadian hog sector, but structural forces at work reshaping communities and economies around the world.
Beyond Factory Farming places the fight to save the family farm and the fight for more sustainable and responsive local economies within the larger context of a global struggle to restore democracy and economic sanity in the face of runaway corporate power. It is a chronicle of what we have lost, a cautionary tale, and a message of hope for the future.
Available from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). Order your copy online.
Holy Cows and Hog Heaven by Joel Salatin
Tackling issues from farmer integrity to consumer kitchens to cultural cheap food policies Salatin puts producers and patrons on the same team to create a farm friendly food landscape. Ultimately empowering “Holy Cows and Hog Heaven” frees every food buyer from feeling enslaved by the industrial food system. This book is for anyone who wants to see healthy farms and healthy children.
Order your copy online.
Real Food for a Change by Wayne Roberts, Lori Stahlbrand and Rod McRae
A powerful tool for alleviating the growing anxiety about food, this book shows us elegently simple solutions as home-based as the dinner table. Many books deal with the connection between diet and health. Real Food for a Change is the only book that connects individual health with the health of the community, the economy and the planet. This visionary guide helps you make positive environmental and ethical decisions about how and what you eat.
Order your copy online.
Organizing for Social Change
Chapters include:
The fundamentals of direct action organizing; developing a strategy; organizing models: the underlying structure of organization; building and joining coalitions; developing leadership; using the media; working with religious organizations and with unions; public speaking; working with community organization boards; on line research and tactical investigation; grass roots fundraising; supervision; administrative systems; the new economy.
Order your copy online, or write to:
Seven Locks Press
P.O. Box 25689
Santa Ana, CA 92799
The Troublemakers Teaparty: A Manual for Effective Citizen Action
By Charles Dobson
Thousands of small groups with few resources spend large amounts of time trying to influence decision-makers. For the most part, these groups are made up of ordinary citizens driven by a desire to make a difference beyond their own lives. Governments and corporations call these people “troublemakers.” Those who study complex problems ranging from health care to global warming say we need far more troublemakers, far more active citizens.
Order your copy online , or write to:
New Society Publishers
P.O. Box 189
Gabriola Island, B.C.
Canada, V0R 1X0
Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment
By Doug Aberley
Whether opposing a clearcut or toxic dump, participating in local planning or zoning, or trying to learn more about your own region, Boundaries of Home will help you find, use and create the maps that are right for you. Using overlays, tapestries and stories, communities can map what’s crucial to them: water and air flows, commuting patterns, distribution of species, local history. Includes a step-by-step description of how to use accessible sources to compile truly empowering images of one’s home.
The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice and Sustainability By Lierre Keith
We’ve been told that a vegetarian diet can feed the hungry, honor the animals, and save the planet. Lierre Keith believed in that plant-based diet and spent twenty years as a vegan. But in The Vegetarian Myth, she argues that we’ve been led astray--not by our longings for a just and sustainable world, but by our ignorance.
The truth is that agriculture is a relentless assault against the planet, and more of the same won’t save us. In service to annual grains, humans have devastated prairies and forests, driven countless species extinct, altered the climate, and destroyed the topsoil--the basis of life itself. Keith argues that if we are to save this planet, our food must be an act of profound and abiding repair: it must come from inside living communities, not be imposed across them.
Part memoir, part nutritional primer, and part political manifesto, The Vegetarian Myth will challenge everything you thought you knew about food politics.