An eloquent tribute to the small farmers who are sowing the seeds of change for how we produce food
DEEPLY ROOTED:
UNCONVENTIONAL FARMERS
IN THE AGE OF AGRIBUSINESS
Lisa M. Hamilton
Counterpoint / Publishers Group West
$15,95 Trade Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-58243-586-2
March 2010
Current affairs / American agriculture
“In a time when agribusiness and the global economy are making the rules, and when most people of the land are striving to be obedient, these people have had the courage to use their own intelligence in their own places. They have been appropriately rewarded for their independence, and readers of this book will be rewarded also. As for me, when I read of the Podoll family’s thinking about local adaptation and their effort ‘to get the maximum from the minimum,’ I wanted to stand up and shout.”
— from a letter to the author by Wendell Berry
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DEEPLY ROOTED is available from Publishers Group West or from your preferred wholesaler. Be sure to contact the publisher for more information about this title.
If you are interested in scheduling an event, interview, or book club event or phoner with author Lisa Hamilton, please contact Carrie Dieringer, Counterpoint PublicityAssociate, (510) 704-0230 ext. 214, carrie.dieringer@counterpointpress.com. Hamilton lives in California, so her availability for in-person events is limited.
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ABOUT THE BOOK
“The food revolution taking place in this country cannot be truly successful without an agricultural revolution. We must inspire our farmers and create millions more of them. The extraordinary farmers Lisa Hamilton profiles in Deeply Rooted embody the future of American agriculture.”
— Alice Waters
”David Podoll set out to prove organic agriculture wrong, but instead was converted; he and his brother now buck the North Dakotan trend of farm consolidation and corn, soybean and wheat monoculture by focusing on the family garden and breeding plants for diversity, beauty and strength. The book vividly shows how these stubborn individualists rooted in the soil struggle are forging a path away from monolithic agribusiness to sustainable agriculture for its promise of spiritual integrity, community and food security.”
– Publishers Weekly
A century of industrialization has left our food system riddled with problems, yet for solutions we look to nutritionists and government agencies, scientists and chefs. Lisa M. Hamilton asks: why not look to the people who grow our food?
In this narrative nonfiction book she tells three stories, of an African-American dairyman in Texas who plays David to the Goliath of agribusiness corporations; a tenth-generation rancher in New Mexico struggling to restore agriculture as a pillar of his community; and a modern pioneer family in North Dakota breeding new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: climate change and the patenting of life forms. In unique ways, these “unconventional farmers” reject the passive role that modern agriculture has insisted they accept and instead reclaim their place as stewards of the land and leaders within society.
Threads of history and discussion weave through the tales, exploring how farmers have been pushed to the margins of agriculture and how that has led to the broken food system we grapple with today. These unusual characters and their extraordinary stories make the case that in order to repair the damage, we must bring farmers back to the table.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Journalist and photographer Lisa M. Hamilton spent two years profiling three families in rural America who represent a change in the way we should think about food and agriculture, including the Podolls, a modern pioneer family in LaMoure, North Dakota, breeders of new varieties of plants to face the future’s double threat: global warming and biotech food.
Hamilton’s work has been published in National Geographic Traveler, Harper’s Magazine, The Nation, Orion, and Gastronomica. She lives in Northern California.
