The Farm as Natural Habitat: Reconnecting Food Systems With Ecosystems - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 155963846X ISBN 13: 9781559638463

Publisher: Island Press, 2002

Synopsis

The Farm as Natural Habitat is a vital new contribution to the debate about agriculture and its impacts on the land. Arising from the conviction that the agricultural landscape as a whole could be restored to a healthy diversity, the book challenges the notion that the dominant agricultural landscape -- bereft of its original vegetation and wildlife and despoiled by chemical runoff -- is inevitable if we are to feed ourselves. Contributors bring together insights and practices from the fields of conservation biology, sustainable agriculture, and environmental restoration to link agriculture and biodiversity, farming and nature, in celebrating a unique alternative to conventional agriculture.Rejecting the idea that "ecological sacrifice zones" are a necessary part of feeding a hungry world, the book offers compelling examples of an alternative agriculture that can produce not only healthful food, but fully functioning ecosystems and abundant populations of native species. Contributors include Collin Bode, George Boody, Brian DeVore, Arthur (Tex) Hawkins, Buddy Huffaker, Rhonda Janke, Richard Jefferson, Nick Jordan, Cheryl Miller, Heather Robertson, Carol Shennan, Judith Soule, Beth Waterhouse, and others.The Farm as Natural Habitat is both hopeful and visionary, grounded in real examples, and guided by a commitment to healthy land and thriving communities. It is the first book to offer a viable approach to addressing the challenges of protecting and restoring biodiversity on private agricultural land and is essential reading for anyone concerned with issues of land or biodiversity conservation, farming and agriculture, ecological restoration, or the health of rural communities and landscapes.

About this title

About the Author

Dana L. Jackson is associate director of the Land Stewardship Project in White Bear Lake, Minnesota. Laura L. Jackson is associate professor of biology at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls, Iowa.

Review

"...a book that would make Aldo Leopold proud...a testimonial to Leopold's Land Ethic and those 21st-century farmers, rural landowners, and policy analysts who are applying its tenets of conservation, restoration, and right livelihood." (Dave Egan editor of Ecological Restoration)

About this edition

• Publisher: Island Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 155963846X
• ISBN 13: 9781559638463
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 312
• Editor: Jackson Dana L., Jackson Prof. Laura