Changing the Food Game: Market Transformation Strategies for Sustainable Agriculture

* A key contribution to the debate on sustainable agriculture and food
* Includes interviews with 40 world-leading experts
* An innovative step-by-step process approach to solving complex problems that can be applied to any business

By 2100, the world’s population is estimated to grow to over 10 billion. Changing the Food Game shows how our unsustainable food production system cannot support this growth. In this prescient book, Lucas Simons argues that the biggest challenge for our generation can only be solved by effective market transformation to achieve sustainable agriculture and food production.

Lucas Simons explains clearly how we have created a production and trading system which is inherently unsustainable. But he also explores that we have reason to be hopeful – from a sustainability race in the cocoa industry to examples of market transformation taking place in palm oil, timber and sugarcane production. He also poses the question: where next?

Rigorous and eye-opening, Changing the Food Game uncovers the real story of how our food makes it on to our plates and presents a game-changing solution to revolutionize the industry.

Read More →

Resilient Agriculture: Cultivating Food Systems for a Changing Climate

Climate change presents an unprecedented challenge to the productivity and profitability of agriculture in North America. More variable weather, drought, and flooding create the most obvious damage, but hot summer nights, warmer winters, longer growing seasons, and other environmental changes have more subtle but far-reaching effects on plant and livestock growth and development.

Resilient Agriculture recognizes the critical role that sustainable agriculture will play in the coming decades and beyond. The latest science on climate risk, resilience, and climate change adaptation is blended with the personal experience of farmers and ranchers to explore:

  • The “strange changes” in weather recorded over the last decade
  • The associated shifts in crop and livestock behavior
  • The actions producers have taken to maintain productivity in a changing climate

The climate change challenge is real and it is here now. To enjoy the sustained production of food, fiber, and fuel well into the twenty-first century, we must begin now to make changes that will enhance the adaptive capacity and resilience of North American agriculture. The rich knowledge base presented in Resilient Agriculture is poised to serve as the cornerstone of an evolving, climate-ready food system.

Laura Lengnick is a researcher, policymaker, activist, educator, and farmer whose work explores the community-enhancing potential of agriculture and food systems. She directs the academic program in sustainable agriculture at Warren Wilson College and was a lead author of the report Climate Change and Agriculture in the United States: Effects and Adaptation.

Read More →

Forages, Volume 1: An Introduction to Grassland Agriculture (Volume I)

The sixth edition of Forages, Volume I, highlights plant adaptation and the complexity of forage management by integrating soil, climate, and herbivory factors with production goals.
 
This exceptional sourcebook has been extensively reconfigured to address the needs of today’s undergraduate student and provide a foundation for problem solving and decision making in forage management. Sidebars and study questions will aid student review and comprehension. Forages teachers themselves, authors from across the continental United States provide broad, national coverage of key species and management practices in a framework of comparative analysis.

Read More →