Download or read book Seeds of Destruction written by Glenn Hubbard and published by FT Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If you think the current administration is mismanaging the economy straight towards disaster, you're not alone: so do two top economists from both sides of the political aisle. In Seeds of Destruction, former Bush chief White House economist R. Glenn Hubbard and well-known CNBC commentator Peter Navarro explain why current economic policy is a catastrophic failure. Then, they offer a comprehensive, bipartisan blueprint for reversing the decline of America's currency, manufacturing base, and standard of living - setting the stage for the epic policy debates that will precede the 2010 elections. Hubbard and Navarro begin with a "checklist" of what it takes to be a prosperous, democratic nation - and show why Obama's policies (some of Bush's also) fail on every level. They explain why the activist Federal Reserve and Obama fiscal stimulus policies are doing far more harm than good... why we must restore the U.S. manufacturing base, whatever China says about it... how to transform tax policy into an engine of growth and innovation... how to apply the "tough love" needed to save Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid... why America must resign the job of world policeman... how market-based solutions can finally deliver real energy independence... how to reform our antique financial regulatory system without imposing heavy-handed rules that cause even more trouble.

Download or read book First the Seed written by Jack Ralph Kloppenburg and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1990-06-29 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This history of the scientific and commercial lines of plant development in the United States traces the transformation of the seed from a public good produced and reproduced by farmers into a commodity controlled by businesses and corporations divorced from the uses of their product.

Download or read book Seeds of Sustainability written by Pamela A. Matson and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2012-09-26 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seeds of Sustainability is a groundbreaking analysis of agricultural development and transitions toward more sustainable management in one region. An invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers, and students alike, it examines new approaches to make agricultural landscapes healthier for both the environment and people. The Yaqui Valley is the birthplace of the Green Revolution and one of the most intensive agricultural regions of the world, using irrigation, fertilizers, and other technologies to produce some of the highest yields of wheat anywhere. It also faces resource limitations, threats to human health, and rapidly changing economic conditions. In short, the Yaqui Valley represents the challenge of modern agriculture: how to maintain livelihoods and increase food production while protecting the environment. Renowned scientist Pamela Matson and colleagues from leading institutions in the U.S. and Mexico spent fifteen years in the Yaqui Valley in Sonora, Mexico addressing this challenge. Seeds of Sustainability represents the culmination of their research, providing unparalleled information about the causes and consequences of current agricultural methods. Even more importantly, it shows how knowledge can translate into better practices, not just in the Yaqui Valley, but throughout the world.

Download or read book Seed Money Monsanto s Past and Our Food Future written by Bartow J. Elmore and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An authoritative and eye-opening history that examines how Monsanto came to have outsized influence over our food system. Monsanto, a St. Louis chemical firm that became the world’s largest maker of genetically engineered seeds, merged with German pharma-biotech giant Bayer in 2018—but its Roundup Ready® seeds, introduced twenty-five years ago, are still reshaping the farms that feed us. When researchers found trace amounts of the firm’s blockbuster herbicide in breakfast cereal bowls, Monsanto faced public outcry. Award-winning historian Bartow J. Elmore shows how the Roundup story is just one of the troubling threads of Monsanto’s past, many told here and woven together for the first time. A company employee sitting on potentially explosive information who weighs risking everything to tell his story. A town whose residents are urged to avoid their basements because Monsanto’s radioactive waste laces their homes’ foundations. Factory workers who peel off layers of their skin before accepting cash bonuses to continue dirty jobs. An executive wrestling with the ethics of selling a profitable product he knew was toxic. Incorporating global fieldwork, interviews with company employees, and untapped corporate and government records, Elmore traces Monsanto’s astounding evolution from a scrappy chemical startup to a global agribusiness powerhouse. Monsanto used seed money derived from toxic products—including PCBs and Agent Orange—to build an agricultural empire, promising endless bounty through its genetically engineered technology. Skyrocketing sales of Monsanto’s new Roundup Ready system stunned even those in the seed trade, who marveled at the influx of cash and lavish incentives into their sleepy sector. But as new data emerges about the Roundup system, and as Bayer faces a tide of lawsuits over Monsanto products past and present, Elmore’s urgent history shows how our food future is still very much tethered to the company’s chemical past.

Download or read book Seeds of Change written by Henry Hobhouse and published by Counterpoint. This book was released on 2005 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the historical influences of six commercial plants, including sugar, tea, cotton, potatoes, quinine, and coca, evaluates their role in the Atlantic slave trade, opening up of China, and establishment of multiple colonial empires. Reprint.

Download or read book The Triumph of Seeds written by Thor Hanson and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-03-24 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As seen on PBS's American Spring LIVE, the award-winning author of Buzz and Feathers presents a natural and human history of seeds, the marvels of the plant kingdom. "The genius of Hanson's fascinating, inspiring, and entertaining book stems from the fact that it is not about how all kinds of things grow from seeds; it is about the seeds themselves." -- Mark Kurlansky, New York Times Book Review We live in a world of seeds. From our morning toast to the cotton in our clothes, they are quite literally the stuff and staff of life: supporting diets, economies, and civilizations around the globe. Just as the search for nutmeg and pepper drove the Age of Discovery, coffee beans fueled the Enlightenment and cottonseed sparked the Industrial Revolution. Seeds are fundamental objects of beauty, evolutionary wonders, and simple fascinations. Yet, despite their importance, seeds are often seen as commonplace, their extraordinary natural and human histories overlooked. Thanks to this stunning new book, they can be overlooked no more. This is a book of knowledge, adventure, and wonder, spun by an award-winning writer with both the charm of a fireside story-teller and the hard-won expertise of a field biologist. A fascinating scientific adventure, it is essential reading for anyone who loves to see a plant grow.

Download or read book The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption written by G. Seyfang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2008-12-11 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a fresh look at sustainable consumption, exploring how grassroots community action can spread ideas in society. It presents a 'New Economics' approach based on alternative measures of wealth and value, examining how these are put into practice through local organic food systems, low-impact eco-housing, and complementary currencies.

Download or read book Citizen Led Innovation for a New Economy written by John Gaventa and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2020-07-10T00:00:00Z with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of eleven cases of citizens organizing for change in Canada and the United States gives form and substance to the ideal of a new economy based on fairness and environmental sustainability. These are stories of local citizens responding to the economically distorting effects of globalization, the environmental degradation brought about by industrial development and a deep concern about climate change. Grappling with complex problems in their local communities, they are forging innovation, prying open cracks in the system and seizing opportunities to redirect economic life. The cases in Citizen-Led Innovation for a New Economy explore urban and rural initiatives among citizens in ethnically diverse settings — First Nations, Inuit, Latino, African American, predominantly white and mixed communities — where self-organized efforts to bring about change have generated innovation in economic and social life. Innovation in these cases means a new way of working, tying economic justice to the creation of multiple types of environmental, economic and social assets or forms of wealth. They are stories of individuals working together to challenge the short-term focus of political leadership by taking action for the sake of future generations.

Download or read book The Profit of the Earth written by Courtney Fullilove and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While there is enormous public interest in biodiversity, food sourcing, and sustainable agriculture, romantic attachments to heirloom seeds and family farms have provoked misleading fantasies of an unrecoverable agrarian past. The reality, as Courtney Fullilove shows, is that seeds are inherently political objects transformed by the ways they are gathered, preserved, distributed, regenerated, and improved. In The Profit of the Earth, Fullilove unearths the history of American agricultural development and of seeds as tools and talismans put in its service. Organized into three thematic parts, The Profit of the Earth is a narrative history of the collection, circulation, and preservation of seeds. Fullilove begins with the political economy of agricultural improvement, recovering the efforts of the US Patent Office and the nascent US Department of Agriculture to import seeds and cuttings for free distribution to American farmers. She then turns to immigrant agricultural knowledge, exploring how public and private institutions attempting to boost midwestern wheat yields drew on the resources of willing and unwilling settlers. Last, she explores the impact of these cereal monocultures on biocultural diversity, chronicling a fin-de-siècle Ohio pharmacist’s attempt to source Purple Coneflower from the diminishing prairie. Through these captivating narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, Fullilove explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development—ultimately challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculture’s past and future.

Download or read book New Rules for the New Economy written by Kevin Kelly and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1999 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic book on business strategy in the new networked economy— from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Inevitable Forget supply and demand. Forget computers. The old rules are broken. Today, communication, not computation, drives change. We are rushing into a world where connectivity is everything, and where old business know-how means nothing. In this new economic order, success flows primarily from understanding networks, and networks have their own rules. In New Rules for the New Economy, Kelly presents ten fundamental principles of the connected economy that invert the traditional wisdom of the industrial world. Succinct and memorable, New Rules explains why these powerful laws are already hardwired into the new economy, and how they play out in all kinds of business—both low and high tech— all over the world. More than an overview of new economic principles, it prescribes clear and specific strategies for success in the network economy. For any worker, CEO, or middle manager, New Rules is the survival kit for the new economy.

Download or read book Seeds of Power written by Amalia Leguizamón and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-11 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1996 Argentina adopted genetically modified (GM) soybeans as a central part of its national development strategy. Today, Argentina is the third largest global grower and exporter of GM crops. Its soybeans—which have been modified to tolerate being sprayed with herbicides—now cover half of the country's arable land and represent a third of its total exports. While soy has brought about modernization and economic growth, it has also created tremendous social and ecological harm: rural displacement, concentration of landownership, food insecurity, deforestation, violence, and the negative health effects of toxic agrochemical exposure. In Seeds of Power Amalia Leguizamón explores why Argentines largely support GM soy despite the widespread damage it creates. She reveals how agribusiness, the state, and their allies in the media and sciences deploy narratives of economic redistribution, scientific expertise, and national identity as a way to elicit compliance among the country’s most vulnerable rural residents. In this way, Leguizamón demonstrates that GM soy operates as a tool of power to obtain consent, to legitimate injustice, and to quell potential dissent in the face of environmental and social violence.

Download or read book Real Impact written by Morgan Simon and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading investment professional explains the world of impact investing -- investing in businesses and projects with a social and financial return--and shows what it takes to make sustainable, transformative change. Impact investment -- the support of social and environmental projects with a financial return -- has become a hot topic on the global stage; poised to eclipse traditional aid by ten times in the next decade. But the field is at a tipping point: Will impact investment empower millions of people worldwide, or will it replicate the same mistakes that have plagued both aid and finance? Morgan Simon is an investment professional who works at the nexus of social finance and social justice. In Real Impact, she teaches us how to get it right, leveraging the world's resources to truly transform the economy. Over the past seventeen years, Simon has influenced over $150 billion from endowments, families, and foundations. In Real Impact, Simon shares her experience as both investor and activist to offer clear strategies for investors, community leaders, and entrepreneurs alike. Real Impact is essential reading for anyone seeking real change in the world.

Download or read book New Economy New Myth written by Jean Gadrey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-28 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With so much written about the 'new economy', this book employs a mixture of academic rigour and readable prose making it a distinctive and intriguing read for those interested in the internet bubble - and the furor that surrounded it.

Download or read book New Seeds and Poor People written by Michael Lipton and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2010-11-29 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1989, this book deals with the impact of cereal production upon the Third World, specifically ‘Modern Varieties’ (MVs). Using evidence from plant breeding, economics and nutrition science, the authors seek to pinpoint what has been achieved, what has gone wrong and what needs to be done in future. Although the technical innovations of MVs mean more employment, cheaper food and less risk for small farmers, the reduction in crop diversity increases the risk of danger from pests and though MVs enlarge cereal stocks, many are too poor to afford them. The book concludes that technical breakthroughs alone won’t solve deep-rooted social problems and that only new policies and research priorities will increase the choices, assets and power of the rural poor.

Download or read book Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money written by Woody Tasch and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2010-05-15 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Could there ever be an alternative stock exchange dedicated to slow, small, and local? Could a million American families get their food from CSAs? What if you had to invest 50 percent of your assets within 50 miles of where you live?Such questions-at the heart of slow money-represent the first steps on our path to a new economy. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money presents an essential new strategy for investing in local food systems and introduces a group of fiduciary activists who are exploring what should come after industrial finance and industrial agriculture. Theirs is a vision for investing that puts soil fertility into return-on-investment calculations and serves people and place as much at it serves industry sectors and markets. Leading the charge is Woody Tasch-whose decades of work as a venture capitalist, foundation treasurer, and entrepreneur now shed new light on a truer, more beautiful, more prudent kind of fiduciary responsibility. He offers an alternative vision to the dusty old industrial concepts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when dollars, and the businesses they financed, lost their connection to place; slow money, on the other hand, is firmly rooted in the new economic, social, and environmental realities of the 21st century. Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money is a call to action for designing capital markets built around not extraction and consumption but preservation and restoration. Is it a movement or is it an investment strategy? Yes.

Download or read book Cultivating Knowledge written by Andrew Flachs and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A single seed is more than just the promise of a plant. In rural south India, seeds represent diverging paths toward a sustainable livelihood. Development programs and global agribusiness promote genetically modified seeds and organic certification as a path toward more sustainable cotton production, but these solutions mask a complex web of economic, social, political, and ecological issues that may have consequences as dire as death. In Cultivating Knowledge anthropologist Andrew Flachs shows how rural farmers come to plant genetically modified or certified organic cotton, sometimes during moments of agrarian crisis. Interweaving ethnographic detail, discussions of ecological knowledge, and deep history, Flachs uncovers the unintended consequences of new technologies, which offer great benefits to some—but at others’ expense. Flachs shows that farmers do not make simple cost-benefit analyses when evaluating new technologies and options. Their evaluation of development is a complex and shifting calculation of social meaning, performance, economics, and personal aspiration. Only by understanding this complicated nexus can we begin to understand sustainable agriculture. By comparing the experiences of farmers engaged with these mutually exclusive visions for the future of agriculture, Cultivating Knowledge investigates the human responses to global agrarian change. It illuminates the local impact of global changes: the slow, persistent dangers of pesticides, inequalities in rural life, the aspirations of people who grow fibers sent around the world, the place of ecological knowledge in modern agriculture, and even the complex threat of suicide. It all begins with a seed.

Download or read book Going to Seed written by Simon Fairlie and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-22 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Simon Fairlie is possibly the most influential—and unusual—eco-activist you might not have heard of."—The Observer An unforgettable firsthand account of how the hippie movement flowered in the late 1960s, appeared spent by the Thatcher-consumed 1980s, yet became the seedbed for progressive reform we now take for granted—and continues to inspire generations of rebels and visionaries. "Fairlie has a refreshingly declarative style: he’s analytical, funny and self-aware. . . His memoir has much to offer anyone interested in movement history or in the future of intentional communities."—Elizabeth Royte, Food & Environment Reporting Network At a young age, Simon Fairlie rejected the rat race and embarked on a new trip to find his own path. He dropped out of Cambridge University to hitchhike to Istanbul and bicycle through India. He established a commune in France, was arrested multiple times for squatting and civil disobedience, and became a leading figure in protests against the British government’s road building programs of the 1980s and—later—in legislative battles to help people secure access to land for low impact, sustainable living. Over the course of fifty years, we witness a man’s drive for self-sufficiency, freedom, authenticity, and a deep connection to the land. Fairlie grew up in a middle-class household in leafy middle England. His path had been laid out for him by his father: boarding school, Oxbridge, and a career in journalism. But everything changed when Simon’s life ran headfirst into London’s counterculture in the 1960s. Finding Beat poetry, blues music, cannabis and anti–Vietnam War protests unlocked a powerful lust to be free. Instead of becoming a celebrated Fleet Street journalist like his father, Simon became a laborer, a stonemason, a farmer, a scythesman, and then a magazine editor and a writer of a very different sort. In Going to Seed he shares the highs of his experience, alongside the painful costs of his ongoing search for freedom—estrangement from his family, financial insecurity, and the loss of friends and lovers to the excesses and turbulence that continued through the 70s and 80s. Part moving, free-wheeling memoir, part social critique, Going to Seed questions the current trajectory of Western “progress”—and the explosive consumerism, growing inequality, and environmental devastation laid bare in our daily newsfeeds—and will resonate with anyone who wonders what the world might look like if we began to chart a radically different course. "This is a fascinating, funny and moving record of an extraordinary life lived in extraordinary times."—George Monbiot