San Antonio College Library

Investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases. Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award-winning article,...

Sarah Elton walks fields and farms on three continents, not only investigating the very real threats to our food, but also telling the little-known stories of the people who are working against time to create a new and hopeful future. By 2050, the world population is expected to reach nine billion, and the challenge of feeding this population, along with climate changes, will increasingly wreak havoc on the way we produce our food. At the same time,...

Farming in Nature's Image provides, for the first time, a detailed look into the pioneering work of The Land Institute, the leading educational and research organization for sustainable agriculture. The authors draw on case studies, hands-on experience, and research results to explain the applications of a new system of agriculture based on one unifying concept: that farms should mimic the ecosystems in which they exist. They present both theoretical...

"Over the past century American agriculture has shifted dramatically, with small, commercial farms finding it increasingly difficult to compete with large-scale (mostly indoor) animal feeding operations (AFOs). In this book Terence J. Centner investigates environmental, social, economic, and political considerations related to the rise of the so-called factory farm, exposing the ramifications of the contemporary trend toward industrial-scale food...

"The bananas we eat today aren't your parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe it out. That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought us produce in perpetual abundance--once-rare fruits are seemingly never out of season, and we breed and clone...