Download or read book Bet the Farm written by Beth Hoffman and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Eloquent and detailed...precise and well-thought-out...Read her book — and listen.” — Jane Smiley, The Washington Post. Beth Hoffman was living the good life: she had a successful career as a journalist and professor, a comfortable home in San Francisco, and plenty of close friends and family. Yet in her late 40s, she and her husband decided to leave the big city and move to his family ranch in Iowa—all for the dream of becoming a farmer, to put into practice everything she had learned over decades of reporting on food and agriculture. There was just one problem: money. Half of America's two million farms made less than $300 in 2019. Between rising land costs, ever-more expensive equipment, the growing uncertainty of the climate, and few options for health care, farming today is a risky business. For many, simply staying afloat is a constant struggle. Bet the Farm chronicles this struggle through Beth’s eyes as a beginning farmer. 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. The couple also must balance the books, hoping that farming isn’t a romantic fantasy that takes every cent of their savings. Even with a decent nest egg and access to land, making ends meet at times seems impossible. And Beth knows full well that she is among the privileged. 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? 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.
Download or read book The Rise of Women Farmers and Sustainable Agriculture written by Carolyn Sachs and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2016-05-15 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A profound shift is occurring among women working in agriculture - they are increasingly seeing themselves as farmers, not only as the wives or daughters of farmers. In this book, farm women in the northeastern United States describe how they got into farming and became successful entrepreneurs despite the barriers they encountered in agricultural institutions, farming communities, and even their own families. The authors' feminist agrifood systems theory (FAST) values women's ways of knowing and working in agriculture and has the potential to shift how farmers, agricultural professionals, and anyone else interested in farming think about gender and sustainability, as well as to change how feminist scholars and theorists think about agriculture.--COVER.
Download or read book Practical Farmers of Iowa written by and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practical Farmers of Iowa is a non-profit organization who's mission is to promote farming systems that are profitable, ecologically sound, and good for families and communities.
Download or read book Farming for the Long Haul written by Michael Foley and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farming in the ruins of the twentieth century -- A short, unhappy history of business advice for farmers -- Subsistence first! -- Land for the tiller -- Soil, civilization, and resilient farmers through the centuries -- Resourceful farmers -- Woodlands and wastes -- It takes a village: leisure, community, and resilience -- Getting a living, forging a livelihood -- Farmer, citizen, survivor: politics and resilience
Download or read book The Indians of Iowa written by Lance M. Foster and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2009-10 with total page 166 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An overview of Iowa's Native American tribes that discusses their history, culture, language, and traditions, and includes illustrations.
Download or read book The Future of Family Farms written by Teresa Opheim and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A monumental transfer of farmland is occurring in the United States. The average American farmer is fifty-eight years old, and the 40 percent of farmland owners who lease their land to others are even older: sixty-six on average. Five times as many farmers are over sixty-five as are under thirty-five. What will happen to this land? Who will own it? What if one child wants to farm but can't afford to buy out the nonfarming siblings? What if keeping the farm in the family means foregoing the significant profits that could be earned from selling it? These sometimes painful and divisive questions confront many farmers and farmland owners today. How they answer them will shape their families and the land for generations to come. The Farm Legacy Letters project, developed by the member-driven nonprofit Practical Farmers of Iowa, is designed to help farmers and farmland owners think about their farm’s future and talk about it with their families. An essential complement to handbooks on business succession, this book gathers the letters and stories of midwestern families about the land they cherish—how they acquired it, what they treasure most about it, and their hopes for its future. Some of the writers descend from families who have owned a particular patch of the earth since the 1800s, while others became farmland owners more recently—one as recently as 2015. Some are no longer farmland owners at all, because—after careful thought about what mattered most to them—they sold their land to the next generation of farmers. All of these writers hope that, by sharing their farmland legacies, they will encourage others to ponder and then write about the histories, accomplishments, challenges, and hopes for their farmland for the generations who come after they are gone.
Download or read book Farming for Us All written by Michael Mayerfeld Bell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2024-02-20 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Climate change. Habitat loss. Soil erosion. Groundwater depletion. Toxins in our food. Inhumane treatment of farm animals. Increasing farm worker exploitation. Hunger and malnutrition in the midst of plenty. What will it take for farmers in the United States to embrace sustainable practices? Michael Mayerfeld Bell’s Farming for Us All first tackled this question twenty years ago, providing crucial insight into how the structure of US agriculture created this situation and exploring, by contrast, the practices of farmers who are working together to radically change how they think, learn, and grow. This updated edition of his now-classic work reflects on the lessons learned over the past two decades. Constrained by an oppressive nexus of markets, regulations, subsidies, and technology, farmers find themselves undermining their own economic and social security as well as the security of the land. Bell turns to Practical Farmers of Iowa (PFI), that state’s largest sustainable-agriculture group. He traces how PFI creates an agriculture that engages others—farmers, researchers, officials, and consumers—in a common conversation about what agriculture could look like. Through dialogue, PFI members crossbreed knowledge, discovering pragmatic solutions to help crops grow in ways that sustain families, communities, societies, economies, and environments. Farming for Us All makes the case that for sustainable farming to flourish, new social relations are as important to cultivate as new crops. This book is necessary—and hopeful—reading for anyone concerned about the present and future of food and farming.
Download or read book A Good Day s Work written by Dwight W. Hoover and published by Ivan R. Dee Publisher. This book was released on 2007 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dwight Hoover, who grew up on an Iowa farm, recalls the events of day-to-day life in this era, offering detailed descriptions of daily work in each of the year's four seasons. A fascinating if grim reminder of what it was like to be a child with adult responsibilities, Mr. Hoover's unusual memoir recalls the rough edges as well as the happy moments of rural life.
Download or read book Managing Cover Crops Profitably 3rd Ed written by Andy Clark and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2008-07 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover crops slow erosion, improve soil, smother weeds, enhance nutrient and moisture availability, help control many pests and bring a host of other benefits to your farm. At the same time, they can reduce costs, increase profits and even create new sources of income. You¿ll reap dividends on your cover crop investments for years, since their benefits accumulate over the long term. This book will help you find which ones are right for you. Captures farmer and other research results from the past ten years. The authors verified the info. from the 2nd ed., added new results and updated farmer profiles and research data, and added 2 chap. Includes maps and charts, detailed narratives about individual cover crop species, and chap. about aspects of cover cropping.
Download or read book Iowa Agriculture written by Darcy Dougherty Maulsby and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Tall Corn State's agricultural history influences countless aspects of modern life. To truly understand Iowa, you have to understand the culture of agriculture--the stories of the people of the land. In many ways, these are untold stories, especially as more generations of families are further removed from living or working on Iowa farms. Visitors from around the globe travel to Iowa annually for major events like the Farm Progress Show, the World Pork Expo and the World Food Prize. Agriculture has shaped Iowa's landscape from the location of towns and the evolution of the world-famous Iowa State Fair to Iowa's beloved culinary traditions like breaded pork tenderloins, sweet corn and more. Join fifth-generation Iowa farmer Darcy Dougherty Maulsby as she details the fascinating history of agriculture in Iowa.
Download or read book The Iowa Farmer and World War II written by Iowa State College. Committee on the Impact of the War on Iowa Agriculture and published by . This book was released on 1941 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "World War II is the biggest fact in the Iowa farm situation. Though Iowa is far removed from air bombing and submarine torpedoing, it is on the battle front so far as economic and social effects of the war are concerned. Iowa's commercial agriculture underwent terrific strain during and following World War I, and the pressures arising out of World War II promise to be similar, although less severe. It is the purpose of this report to estimate what some of these pressures will be. An understanding of the social and economic forces at work is necessary before plans can be made and action taken to ease the shock of the war. The experience of the earlier war helps us to understand these forces, but that experience must be interpreted in light of the changed situation today."--Page [51].
Download or read book Iowa Year Book of Agriculture written by Iowa. Department of Agriculture and published by . This book was released on 1911 with total page 1126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes proceedings, reports, statistics, etc. of different county and district agricultural institutes and societies.
Download or read book Tarpleywick written by Henry C. Taylor and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Iowa s Remarkable Soils written by Kathleen Woida and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2021-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In language that is scientifically sound but accessible to the layperson, Kathleen Woida explains how Iowa's soils formed and have changed over centuries and millennia. Its soils are what make Iowa a premier agricultural state, both in terms of acres planted and bushels harvested. But in the last hundred years, large-scale intensive agriculture and urban development have severely degraded most of our soils. However, as Woida documents, some innovative Iowans are beginning to repair and regenerate their soils by treating them as the living ecosystem and vast carbon store that they are.
Download or read book On Behalf of the Family Farm written by Jenny Barker Devine and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Behalf of the Family Farm traces the development of women’s activism and agrarian feminisms in the Midwest after 1945, as farm women’s lives were being transformed by the realities of modern agriculture. Author Jenny Barker Devine demonstrates that in an era when technology, depopulation, and rapid economic change dramatically altered rural life, midwestern women met these challenges with their own feminine vision of farm life. Their “agrarian feminisms” offered an alternative to, but not necessarily a rejection of, second-wave feminism. Focusing on women in four national farm organizations in Iowa—the Farm Bureau, the Farmers Union, the National Farm Organization, and the Porkettes—Devine highlights specific moments in time when farm women had to reassess their roles and strategies for preserving and improving their way of life. Rather than retreat from the male-dominated world of agribusiness and mechanized production, postwar women increasingly asserted their identities as agricultural producers and demanded access to public spaces typically reserved for men. Over the course of several decades, they developed agrarian feminisms that combined cherished rural traditions with female empowerment, cooperation, and collaboration. Iowa farm women emphasized working partnerships between husbands and wives, women’s work in agricultural production, and women’s unique ways of understanding large-scale conventional farming.
Download or read book Women in Agriculture written by Linda M. Ambrose and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking readers into the rural hinterlands of the rapidly urbanizing societies of the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and the Netherlands, the essays in Women in Agriculture tell the stories of a cadre of professional women who worked as agricultural researchers, producers, marketers, educators, and community organizers, and acted to bridge the growing rift between those who grew food and those who only consumed it.
Download or read book Soil Sisters written by Lisa Kivirist and published by New Society Publishers. This book was released on 2016-01-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first practical, hands-on guide for female farmers Women in agriculture are sprouting up in record numbers, but they face a host of distinct challenges and opportunities. Blending What Color is Your Parachute-style career advice with sustainable agriculture practices viewed through a gender lens, Soil Sisters provides a wealth of invaluable information for fledging female farming entrepreneurs. The first manual of its kind, this authoritative and comprehensive blueprint presents practical considerations from a woman's perspective, covering everything from business planning to tool use and ergonomics to integrating children and family in farm operations. Key topics include: Finding your niche: mid-life encore careers, young & beginning, boomerangs and more From concept to crop: diversified farm start-up basics Resources, grants & loans for women farmers. Soil Sisters also contains case studies, inspirational ideas and savvy advice nuggets from over 100 successful women farmers and advocates. Targeted specifically to members of the fastest-growing demographic in local agriculture, this highly readable guide is practical and pragmatic "Chick Lit" for today's food scene.
